


In the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time

by sparklight



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Rape, Dubious Consent, M/M, Size Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:19:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a reality where a certain noble turned out slightly harsher, slightly less scrupulous and joined up with the faction he thought would end the fighting the fastest (and to his favour), Sunstreaker detonates bombs in the Towers as a way to destroy the symbol they make, and Cliffjumper pays for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Sunstreaker is a Public Menace

"He's a fraggin' _sociopath_!" Cliffjumper yelled, waving a gun around in one hand and the other one at the yellow and black mech who was being led away by several others. Sideswipe was... conspicuously, absent. "We can't just--- He just blew the whole slaggin' worthless piece of overdecorated architecture up like a processorless glitch! EXCEPT HE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE---"

"You're with the squads looking for survivors, Cliffjumper." The Prime frowned down at him, steel in his voice, and Cliffjumper bristled. Knew he should shut up and do as he was told, but incredulous anger made the words continue to bubble up, especially because he was _sure_ the harsh angle of Optimus' optics wasn't entirely forbidding.

" _Survivors_?! They're gonna want to stab us in the back, _not get fraggin' rescued_! Anyone who's in there can't be slaggin' trusted especially considerin' what just happened, and _who_ placed an' detonated those bombs---"

" _The survivors_ , Cliffjumper. Go with the squads." There was no way to argue against _that_ tone of voice, not that he should've been arguing against the Prime in the _first_ place. But he'd run a few sensitive datalogs to the archive in his days, had exchanged a few words with the dry, to-the-point archivist who nonetheless had patience enough to take Cliffjumper's hissing and narrowed optics and suspicion with amusement, and even if they'd never been _friends_ , Cliffjumper felt comfortable enough, even now, even with the changes, to yell at the former archivist.

Snarling fit to run his engine off-cycle, Cliffjumper whirled around and stomped after the others. It'd take them _forever_ to look through the entirety of the Towers. Not just because the vast area colloquially known as the Towers was widespread, or because the Towers, both containing several suites and estates in a single building, and some belonging to single individuals were many, but also because there really weren't that many left sitting on their buffed afts and sneering about the destruction outside of their gilded homes. Cages, really.

Most had left for the moons, or further off-world, or had joined up with the growing factions by now. Indeed, Cliffjumper held the definitive, sullen suspicion that anyone left in the Towers was secretly a Decepticon, because even if the nobles were part of the power of the old regime, the point of view, that sort of wealth and power the elite of Cybertron had would most easily fit in with the Decepticons, even if they'd had to fight to keep their place in any future possible society.

But that didn't mean he thought blowing the Towers clean was a good thing to do, or the _right_ thing to do. Anyone inside wouldn't have had even the slightest chance to defend themselves, and Decepticons or not, _Autobots_ didn't go around bombing unsuspecting supposed non-combatants. 

Which Sunstreaker had.

Shifting his shoulders to rid them of tension and get rid of the slight twitch that made the wheels rattle against the metal of his upper arms, Cliffjumper held the gun at ready and slid inside the building he and Jazz had been assigned to. This one had, at the least, either had servants still living in the quarters, or squatters. Grimacing at the scattered bodies in the spacious lobby, Cliffjumper nonetheless felt something was... off. Wasn't sure what, but the way they'd been left, the way they were _laying_...

"Check the integrity of the lifts, 'Jumper. If it's safe, ride up as far as it _is_ safe, an' work yaself downwards, okay? I'll start from the bottom an' upwards soon as I've checked these over." Jazz was kneeling over one of the downed mechs, his visor at a nearly invisible glow, hazing out and fitting in with the dim emergency lights. He didn't like it, but Jazz outranked him... and it'd take too long for them to not split up and check in just one direction. 

Reluctantly plugging in and attempting to connect to the lift's diagnostic and maintenance computer, Cliffjumper scowled but finally got connection and then confirmation. Giving Jazz a wave and receiving a nod in return, Cliffjumper got in and waited the _agonisingly long_ time it took to get to the top. 

Not that it took more than a few kliks, and normally he'd have to walk the last few stairs up because the top would be off-limits unless the owner input their own command codes. Now, though, he got to ride the whole way up, reluctantly peering out the glass on the side that faced outside, offering a stunning view of the surrounding Towers, windows and individual floors blown out or not, and beyond that, the mostly intact, hesitantly lit Iacon. 

It was... deceptively beautiful. 

Sunstreaker's bombs wouldn't have been able to bring the buildings down; they, much like any other cybertronian structure, were too sturdy for that. But there was no need to completely demolish a structure to destroy it as a symbol, or kill everyone within it.

The lift opened without any announcement, and Cliffjumper slid out carefully, glaring around the dim, open court. 

A broken flame fountain of some sort sputtered weak gouts of fire intermittently, the pillars beyond having been blasted out and away from the fountain when whatever chemical or metal that had been used to colour the flames reacted with the explosion. There wasn't much else to see at this level; it was mostly an open balcony, tatters of intricately embroidered mesh cloths strung between the pillars fluttering weakly in the residual heat. 

The furniture was cracked and warped, and the handful of rooms found set on either side of the lift were empty as well. Everything was slightly warped and blackened, though the slightest brush against any surface made the soot and cracked upper layers of the metal flake and drift to the floor. The explosion feeding the flame fountain had seriously messed this floor up.

In the stairwell on his way to the floor beneath, Cliffjumper found another victim. Compared to the ones in the lobby, _this one_ had died from the sweltering heat trapped in the stairwell with both the fountain and the explosion blooming. Grimacing, Cliffjumper carefully stepped around and over the sprawled out, graying husk, having to hop to get beyond him, and continued down.

The next floor was empty as well, some sort of... gaming den? Blown out, cracked furniture, but mostly missing the flaking soot from the floor above it, though the ceiling sported some curious warping patterns to the intricately patterned metal.

"Ugh. This is fraggin' _creepy_." Wincing and immediately regretting having said anything aloud as his voice echoed and bounced emptily, Cliffjumper cast a glance around the main room, sporting a depressed circle with a pole in the middle at its center which he wasn't sure of the purpose of, and the smaller rooms around it. 

Nothing. 

The stairwell was blessedly empty. The next two floors were uninteresting, but he did find another victim, also definitely dead. This one also made Cliffjumper similarly uncomfortable like the ones in the lobby. The mech was curled up in a corner, facing it, nowhere near an exit. While he'd clearly been battered by the explosion, bearing some scorch marks and tears from debris and his left leg partly crushed, none of that ought to have been deadly.

Sure, he should probably have turned the mech over, checked more thoroughly but instead he just took a picture and went on. 

When he crept out the door on the fifth floor, Cliffjumper froze. He could've _sworn_...

::Hey, Jazz. Might have some survivors.:: Cliffjumper narrowed his optics as he stared down the short corridor that hid the stairwell entrance from the rest of the floor. He could definitely hear some shuffling and scraping, and low, muttered voices. ::Can't tell how many from the stairwell.::

::Great! Just be careful when ya approach. The others have reported some survivors as well, nothin' major, and quite a few deactivated, so our Tower here ain't anythin' special, but, well. I'll keep ya posted.:: 

Yeah, figured if _he_ had felt something off when looking at the deactivated frames in the lobby, that _Jazz_ would. Hand tightening about the gun, Cliffjumper nonetheless left it pointing downwards, Optimus' sharp words echoing through his processors. 

He came out into an empty lounge, a few scattered and turned over divans and recliners, cracks running through the intricate patterning on the floor and chunks of the ceiling fallen down and creating annoying obstacles. Peeking into the rooms he was sure were empty revealed an office and a library, many of the datapads fallen out of their cradles and laying cracked on the floor. 

Cliffjumper was uncertain what the _rest_ of this positively disgustingly _tall_ tower contained, given that he'd already gone through floors that contained the most usual type of rooms one could expect to find, yet had one or two floors more before he'd be out of the private floors.

Sliding along the wall towards the only room left on this floor, which was probably the bedroom given the others on this floor, Cliffjumper grimaced. Washracks were left... He _supposed_ that the rest could be more rooms to show off. State rooms, guest bedrooms, ballrooms? More... gaming rooms, entertainment or whatever. Despite having been in the Towers a few times before the war, Cliffjumper could _still_ not wrap his processor around all the fragging space, the grand-standing, the _really sort of annoyingly_ overwhelming opulence everywhere---

"We should move up to the upper floors, they're going to hit this soon in their flushing."

Cliffjumper froze right before he got around the doorframe's corner, optics dimming and narrowing. That did _not_ sound like some injured victim in need of _rescue_. Gun up and ready now, Cliffjumper stayed up against the wall, tilting his helm.

"Anyone caught if they parted up? They're checking the corpses and the lift integrity, but the security feed isn't too reliable after the explosion."

Okay, at least they weren't sure where he and Jazz were, exactly. That was good. But what the frag were they doing here, and how many were they?

"Think they're onto us? Don't know about you, but this bombing the Towers thing seems kinda off-colour for the _Autobots_." The third voice spat the last word out with sneering condescension, and Cliffjumper's hand on his gun tightened and he tried to smother the snarl. 

Okay, Decepticons. 

He was gonna have to confirm... Well, he probably "had to" nothing, the fact that there was even _implied_ Decepticons here implied something bad, but Cliffjumper wanted to get confirmation and a visual to maybe tag who they were, and so he carefully and very, very slowly peeked around the corner. 

Four--- No, three mechs were spread out around the berthroom; one purple and gray mech with a mask in place sitting on the floor, back up against the spacious bed and nursing a leg that had, like the corpse upstairs, fallen victim to some sort of debris. Probably a partly-crushed joint and compressed armour and pistons beneath that. Looked like some sort of flyer. 

Next was a neon yellow and poisonously green mech sitting on the edge of the bed and Cliffjumper could just see the hints of some serious scorch marks around the back of the mech's arms; clearly they'd gotten caught in the explosions pretty badly. 

Lastly was some cable-thin, almost creepily long-limbed yahoo with a large visor over his optics, clearly an add-on, sitting on the chair to a desk up against the wall.

Ducking back quickly, Cliffjumper frowned. He could've _sworn_ he'd seen someone blue and white sitting on one of the chairs by the large floor to ceiling window opposite of the doorway. With a slow shake of his helm, Cliffjumper slid a step or so away from the broken doorway – the mechanism had obviously been rattled or destroyed in the explosion - and opened his line to Jazz at the same time as Jazz did the same to him. Jazz was faster, though.

::I want ya ta get down to me, 'Jumper. These mechs down here weren't killed by the _bombs_ but by someone else, an' if they're still in the building--::

::I _know_ , Jazz! I think I just got a look at the ones who did it, too---:: Cliffjumper interrupting Jazz ended in Cliffjumper being interrupted himself as something slammed into him from behind, driving him up against the wall and cracking his helm and nasal ridge hard enough everything briefly turned to static.

"Now, that would be _telling_ , wouldn't it?" The near-fragging _purring_ whisper in his right audio made Cliffjumper jam an elbow back on instinct, and he hit something solid. 

Whirling around, vision spinning as gyros and his rattled sensors tried to catch up and reset back to normal, Cliffjumper's comm. finally came back online. But that, compared to his vision, remained swathed in static, no matter which frequency he tried.

"What the _frag_ \---" Something gave him a good crack about the helm, and Cliffjumper collapsed, but turned it into a roll and came up shooting. That, at least, kept the probably-Decepticons still in the berthroom _in there_ , throwing themselves away from the doorway to avoid the shots.

Were there more than these three-- _four_ in the building? There was, after all, someone _hitting him_! 

Had they gotten Jazz? 

Or was the problem with the comm. on _his_ end? 

Right after he thought that and he _barely_ avoided another punch by picking up the faintest shift in the air and the pressure of an EM field, though expertly drawn up tight against his assailant's frame, Cliffjumper got the status message back that the comm. was being disrupted and that he had to manually do something about the problem. Kicking out blindly, Cliffjumper hit something that had his opponent grunting while he fingered around his helm--

And then his foot was caught.

Optics widening, Cliffjumper had no way to defend against that in time and then the floor disappeared underneath the foot he still had on the floor and he went flying as his opponent yanked the caught appendage. 

The back armour of his altmode that Cliffjumper carried on his upper back in the shape of a hood partly caught the impact as he cracked into the floor, but his helm hit the back of the hood, basically picking up the residual force and it was enough to make his vision go static. Processor ringing, kicking out with his free foot caught him a leg and a swear, then what was probably a knee landed against his own midsection. The curved ceiling and windshield of his altmode that also served as his chestplates caught part of the impact, but the armour glass screeched from the metal digging into it and groaned underneath the pressure.

"Fraggin' _cheater of a Decepticreep_!" Cliffjumper yelled as his vision cleared and he finally had a chance to _maybe_ shoot his still-invisible opponent. At this distance, he'd hit _something_ , and something was better than nothing. 

His foot was dropped at the same time as he steadied his grip on the gun with his other hand, and as the shot burned off, Cliffjumper swore. It'd went wide as the gun was jerked out of probable-point-blank range because a slender, violently pinkish glowing loop appeared out of nowhere, being thrown over the gun and around his hands, and tightened.

"I _suppose_ I could agree with that." There was a mocking lilt as the still-invisible mech chuckled and Cliffjumper snarled, frustration and something that twisted along his circuits mounted inside. 

The tightening yank had snapped the gun up towards the ceiling which would be decorated by a sooty laser burn until the building was repaired or destroyed and then the gun was ripped out of the minibot's hands. 

Pulling on his caught hands, his assailant held fast and that single, slagging-near _delicate_ loop of energon rope was followed by a few more loops and twists and then another pull, forcing his arms up against his chestplate. They were faintly warm against the metal, sliding tight into the crevices and gaps in his wrist joints nearly lovingly, if there was such a thing. Attempting to resist made the thin threads dig into the metal and sting, but besides that, the mech was stronger than Cliffjumper and got his way, making sure the minibot's arms stayed in their position by wrapping the rope around his neck a few times.

"Fraggin'---" Cliffjumper cut himself off, grimacing as his attempt to snap the thin threads between his wrists and to his throat merely yanked at them instead. Further, the thin loops slid over the slatted metal of his neck, finding the grooves between each slat and wedging themselves in there by the movement and his own shifting of his helm. It couldn't and didn't mute him, but it was uncomfortable, edging into painful. 

His opponent _finally_ deigned to flicker into view after that, swooped low over Cliffjumper's frame with a sharp, angled smirk on his pale faceplates, and a blue mask framing brightly blazing golden optics.

Noble.

Well, at least one more of the four present was a noble, Cliffjumper was sure, but _this one_ definitely was a noble, as evidenced by the optics and the sweeping, delicate lines of his faceplates and helm. 

"I ain't the only one in here--" Cliffjumper hissed, not so much cut off as angrily shocked by the slender finger that nonetheless could cover the length of his faceplate suddenly tapping against his lips. The frag did the delicate ornamental glitch who probably would blow his engine the first time he tried to accelerate beyond middling speed _get off_?!

"We know, but thank you for confirming it. Now... were you looking for _survivors_? Mopping up what the explosion couldn't take care of?"

Cliffjumper sputtered, incredulous at the accusation and finally managed to scrape up a snapped "frag no!" as he aimed another kick at the blue and white noble, which, due to the angle and his position, glanced rather harmlessly off a hip and thigh. The noble nonetheless grunted, optics flashing, and then Cliffjumper got a harsh flick to his nasal ridge which just had him staring incredulously. 

The slag was that for sort of... of reprimand?

Static snapped against his lips and over his tongue as slender biting threads pressed up against them and that, this close, smelled faintly of burning energon. It wasn't your typical gag, technically it wasn't a gag at all as the thin threads that cut into the corners of his mouth and against his lips and tongue when he tried to push them out couldn't stop his vocaliser from producing noise. 

But the energon rope laid stinging traces of numbness where they touched the sensitive metal, and his angry, slightly high-pitched curse came out somewhat garbled due to being unable to completely form the words. He glared at the mech above him as that finger traced down his nasal ridge again, then down around his cheek and jaw before he stood up and took Cliffjumper with him.

There was the barest flash of the three other Decepticons - which they were, indeed; he had the barest moment to see the harsh angles of the brand on various parts of their frames - gathered in the doorway before he couldn't see much else than the floor, the rest of the room, and the noble's backside. Which was _not_ what he wanted to see. He also had a fragging wheel digging into his chestplates, and the angle of a shoulder jabbing into the gap of thigh and hip.

"Thought you'd need help there, Mirage."

There was a huff - for Primus' sake, not even the tiniest of snorts, a _huff_ \- from... Mirage, who shook his helm. Cliffjumper could tell since the movement scraped the side of Mirage's helm against his hip.

"Cracked shoulder or no, I do believe I have enough skill and fortitude to take on a _mini_." The sneer rolled between them all as he wandered into the berthroom and if Cliffjumper wasn't absolutely sure there was _no way_ it was an accident or would have been necessary to get him off the shoulder, he'd have thought the slight brush of fingers against his aft was accidental. Not that the outrage was very audible, what with it being muffled as he was summarily dumped face-first on the berth, the mass of mesh padding practically smothering what the energon rope hadn't numbed into incoherency.

Attempting to squirm and use his hands to at least get on his _side_ or something got a whack on his aft hard enough the noise echoed in and he collapsed back down with a squawk. That _hurt_ , and if he wasn't nursing angry pride from the insult about “obviously” being harmless enough even a thin-plated _noble_ could “easily” subdue him (it hadn't been a fair fight, slag it!), Cliffjumper would've noticed the pain flaring out from and into his aft more. 

"Stay still. Now let's see..." Mirage hummed and sat down on the berth beside him, briefly bending over and yanking up his legs to tie a few loops around first one ankle, and then another, leaving enough rope between them that Cliffjumper would, technically and for whatever reason, be able to still walk. Straightening, Mirage let his fingers trail over Cliffjumper's arms. 

Fragging, handsy, disgusting--- 

Stretching his neck so he could at least free his face from the padding enough to get an _idea_ of what was going on, Cliffjumper found he couldn't see much anyway. It made the rope around his neck tighten and bite into the metal like lines of glowing pink acid, but slag it all, he was still going to _try_. 

What he got was mostly part of the panorama view offered by the window that took up a whole wall, the side of Mirage's frame with an arm and the arc of an upper thigh. Then the barest view of a slice of the room which included the tilted, smirking faceplates of the neon disaster of a Decepticon. He couldn't at all see the doorway from here, to get an idea of when, or if, Jazz was coming. It wasn't hard to realise the mech was after his subspace, but he doubted the sheltered glitch knew enough of frames not as ~finely tooled~ as his own that he'd be able to tell where the controls were---

"Get your fraggin' hands off of that!" Not that... it came out that coherent, and his kick met nothing but air and his glare hit somewhere around Mirage's upper chestplates, admittedly probably a shade too bright to convey the anger that was definitely there besides the flickering tongues of something Cliffjumper would rather ignore. 

Those golden optics _winked_ at him, the fragger, and he forced the panel to the subspace port and jack located on the inner curve of Cliffjumper's upper left arm open. Partly forced, anyway. It was a non-essential feature and as such, with enough force, the panel slid aside on its own. 

Cliffjumper found himself vehemently wishing that panel had been located just a shade further in, since then, the way his hands were tied and arms held up, the panel would've been hidden by his arm and the side of his chestplates. As it was, there was just enough space to get at it, and while Mirage actually _paused_ there, tapping the tip of the jack against the edge and Cliffjumper caught a rather thoughtful-looking frown, he then pushed it in. 

Cliffjumper gritted his teeth and glared at the twisting, looping swirl that made up a bedpost. That. totally. didn't. hurt. Fragging too big mechs and their fragging too large standard equipment. He did what he could to shunt resources to keep his subspace closed and the contents within protected, and while that _should have_ been enough since he had been a rather high-end courier and his firewalls and encryption were still top-notch to discourage theft, it apparently wasn't.

Because it seemed that this noble was up on and level with all the tricks and methods to crack courier-level encryption. When the sub-surface shiver vibrated through him and the accompanying popping snap announced that his subspace had been forced open, Cliffjumper snarled, attempted to _bite_ through the _infuriating_ energon rope pressing into his lips and had static pain lashing back through his mouth and throat and snapping against the closed intake valve.

"Well, well, well." Mirage chuckled, handing off his finds to the lamp-post-thin individual, who ran creepily long fingers over _his_ things and he wished he could _break them_. It was the strangest feeling having someone else's hand in his subspace. It wasn't that he could precisely feel the appendage, but there was a strange sort of disharmonious fluctuation that took Cliffjumper a moment until he realised it was Mirage's foreign EM field, not keyed to his subspace as it was, that he was feeling. 

One by one, the two extra regular laser blasters were fished out, the assembled but not yet armed bomb plus the supplies for another one, a tiny emergency ration of energon in a solid, actually physical container for safety's sake, the barely used but rather high-end sniper rifle and _his cannon_ and then the glass gas gun. 

Not that the glitches knew what it was, since it was nearly identical to a regular blaster. Still, it joined the pile on the floor, out of view for Cliffjumper, all the same. Frag it all, he'd liked that version of his glass gas gun.

"Impressive armament from someone so blasting _tiny_." Someone off to the left said, Cliffjumper wasn't sure who, and he glared at the bedpost again. He'd give them fragging tiny, the rusty glitches! He wouldn't admit it, hardly wanted to acknowledge if only to himself, the roiling of his fuel tank or the twitching energy skipping and nipping down his circuits, but... he _was_ afraid. 

He didn't have a slagging clue what would happen next. 

If anything, why hadn't they just _killed him_ \---

The whine of blasters getting ready had all four Decepticons up on their feet, Mirage alert and quick enough, _frag it all_ , to drag Cliffjumper with him as he stood up, the jack jammed in his subspace control panel thankfully - if wince-inducingly - being yanked out by the movement. Then he was dangled from a hold around his neck, energon slowing to a trickle from the pressure, but really, despite his wavering vision, that wasn't his real worry.

"Put him down."

Cliffjumper's real worry was the barrel of a gun pressed against the side of his helm, angled harshly between the join of one of his sensor horns and the curve of his helm. It was hard not to squirm from that, but he wouldn't give _anyone_ the satisfaction of revealing his feeling _discomfited_.

"I don't think so. We have a transport waiting on the upper level. You're going to let us leave." The freakily slender mech with the long, inquisitive fingers stepped up in front of the other three, smirking quite fearlessly - and notably without a single weapon compared to the others - at Optimus Prime and his entourage. Jazz had gotten backup, but really, at this stage it wouldn't really help.

Refusing to give into his systems' demand to either go into stasis lock or at least a lower working level to make up for the lessening availability of energon to his processor, Cliffjumper gritted his teeth and tried to get the over-bright glow of his optics under control, or relax his tightly curled fingers, or _anything_. Being dangled from a hand around his throat wasn't really doing anything for any of that, though. Especially not as the barrel was angled slightly, scraping up against his horn fully and then back down. 

Further, Cliffjumper was probably, by his own mental constitution, probably not very suited as a hostage, even if his size made it easy for others to make the same out of him as long as they could disarm him. 

He winced as the barrel changed angle slightly and cursed himself. He was relieved the noise didn't make it into audio-range, but in a fit of frustration and anger, he kicked back, meeting one of Mirage's knees and promptly got the butt of the blaster whacking into his helm even as Mirage staggered. His vision went static, blacked, and cleared into smears of colour that slowly coalesced into shapes.

"Thank you for your cooperation. Why don't we switch places, perhaps?" The cable-thin creep's genial tone of voice grated, and Cliffjumper had full vision in time to see the door into the bedroom swish closed and be locked. Apparently it hadn't been as broken as he thought.

Panic, mixing with anger, raw and tasting of acid, welled up, but he got hauled over Mirage's shoulder at the same time as he attempted to squirm away and his legs got caught, one foot bouncing off Mirage's chestplate, but not nearly with the force he'd started out with.

"Leggo, ya fraggin' _glitch_!" Cliffjumper was sort of proud that that came out perfectly legible, if a bit slow in an attempt to override the numbness the energon rope spread over his lips and tongue. A finger trailed along the gap where his altmode's main headlights were housed joined his leg. The finger wandered back up along his leg until they could trail out towards the front of his foot, and as the group stepped into the lift Mirage pressed down against one of the two headlights in that foot.

"Listen now, and you'd better listen well, because I'm only going to say this once. And be aware that if someone else was carrying you, or if someone else would have to repeat it later, none of them would be as patient as I am. You'd do well to _behave_." Mirage's exact diction and precise accent stood in sharp relief to the strength he suddenly pushed down with.

The headlight cracked, and Cliffjumper couldn't quite stifle the brief burst of high-pitch static that escaped him. Mirage's hand trailed up the back of his leg, rubbing softly. He was uncomfortably aware of the contrast, and at the same time aware of the fact that the glass had only been cracked. Not punched completely through. That wasn't _that much_ of a consolation even if the former hurt less than the latter would have as they came out onto that balcony level with the broken and now nearly dark flame fountain. Cliffjumper couldn't see it, but he could definitely hear the deep whining thrum of an engine.

Transport.

Okay, but surely they'd... put him down before they got on board? Toss him from the entrance or something? Right? There really was no _reason_ to bring him with, even if Prime and the others got out of the lift this very moment. Then suddenly Mirage's hand landed on his aft and Cliffjumper automatically threw back for a kick. The hand tightened, and the feeling of the headlight's armour glass cracking whipped through him. Not worth it. It didn't matter anyway, did it? Because it wasn't as if Mirage _wouldn't_ put him down---

His helm snapped up as far as it could go with the ropes around his straining neck as the lift doors opened again, Optimus and Jazz spilling out, and then the ship's doors swooped closed, right in front of his nasal ridge.


	2. In Which a Game is Played

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever been part of the pot in a card game? No? Cliffjumper doesn't particularly want to be that either, but that's what's going on.

Leaning his helm back, Cliffjumper, despite the raging warnings and alarms and his own twitchiness demanding he couldn't, that he'd be murdered, that one of them was _going to get close_ , flickered his optics off for a scant few astroseconds and then rebooted them. 

The scene remained the same. 

The scene in this case happened to be an actual gambling den, the layout very similar to the version he'd seen in Mirage's Tower building. Just on a larger scale, and with a very obvious Decepticon symbol being projected on the wall. Behind him, luckily, so he didn't have to stare at it if he didn't want to, but if he twisted around, he could.

Not that he _wanted_ to, especially as he was more busy being paranoid about all the Decepticons _inside Iacon's border_. Well, nominally, anyway. The... Decepticon-aligned? gaming den and foothold in Iacon was set right into the continental wall facing the city-state of Vos, as far as he could figure out from when they got out of the transport anyway, from the brief glimpse of the distant horizon of the Vosian continent.

Optics bouncing around the room, Cliffjumper tried not to squirm at the feeling of being so very exposed. Sitting as he was in the same sort of depressed pit in the middle of the room that the mock gaming den in Mirage's Tower building had had, there was no way to _be_ less exposed in this room. 

He was sure, or at least hoped, the pole wasn't emi>meant to keep unwilling participants stuck in place, but at the moment that was what it was being used for. Via a short length of energon rope that had been tied around his neck to join the rope already there and attached to the pole, it then went around the side of his hood and, presumably, around the pole itself. He'd tried to stand up, but the strength of the threads and the way they cut into the metal of his frame, _especially_ the softer slats and the cables and energon lines that made up his neck and throat had kept him curled up on the floor. 

Flexing his hands, Cliffjumper couldn't _believe_ he'd actually gained a preference for how he was tied up, but he really sort of wished his hands were tied behind his back and not up against his chestplates. 

If nothing else, he'd feel less stupid at the the image he probably made, tied as he was. 

His optics skimmed around the room again, and he was torn between snarling, automatically reaching for weapons he didn't have and couldn't reach even if he _did_ have them, and press up against the inadequate defence the pole offered. There must be at least thirty to forty mechs, along with a few femmes in this room; it had two half-levels above the main one on which he was located, and he was sure there were other rooms beside this one and the balcony levels.

Not all of them sported Decepticon insignias, but given the situation, he doubted any of them were Autobot sympathisers, the glitched fraggers.

"Raise," someone said slightly off to the right and in front of him, and Cliffjumper twitched. One of the Decepticons around that particular table, but not involved in the game, took the six osmium chips he was handed and wandered over to the pit where Cliffjumper sat. 

The pit which, besides Cliffjumper, contained a few cubes of vintage high-grade of various make and origin, an info-disc Cliffjumper was sure was someone attempting to bluff its worth, and a small fortune's worth of various precious metal chips. The six osmium ones were dropped among the others, and the white mech - Cliffjumper thought he'd caught the name "Runamuck", but he might be getting him mixed up with his twin, Runabout, who the frag _knew_... - turned around, as if about to leave, and then turned back. A smirk was impossible to see on the masked and visor-covered faceplates, but Cliffjumper just _knew_ there was one as the mech looked him over.

Looked him over slowly and thoroughly enough it made his pistons freeze and energon cycle through slightly faster, if that made sense. Cliffjumper snarled, baring his teeth.

"What slag do ya want, Decepticreep?" Maybe the threads numbing his lips and tongue should've been left where they were; at least that way he couldn't sass himself into trouble. But they'd been carefully cut away, even if Mirage had had to grip his jaw harshly enough it threatened to dent the metal to make him keep still, because like _slag_ was he going to trust a fragging energo-knife up in his _faceplates_. But cut off they'd been, and then he'd been pushed down on the floor and basically tied to the pole and now he had some leering Decepticreep staring at him.

"Just lookin' over what's in the pot, Autobot. Good haul, this time around. Sweet enough I'm probably gonna have gelled energon in my tanks when everything's over," Runamuck snickered, and Cliffjumper _snarled_ especially when Runabout came closer, stepping more or less into the bubble Cliffjumper considered his "personal space". Because slag it, he still had that! And what the pit did the 'Con even mean, “sweet”? He knew he wasn't ugly by any means, but he had enough angles he'd consider Bumblebee a fair bit “sweeter” than himself.

Nevermind that he had some vague awareness that some people just liked the difference between a minibot and a regular-sized mech or femme.

" _Frag you_!" As if he'd just sit there and _take that_. He wasn't just... Growling, Cliffjumper snapped his leg up and lashed out, though thanks to his feet being tied together, it wasn't a very good kick, and Runamuck caught the tip of it easily. 

The foot that, incidentally, had a cracked headlight.

"Well, don't mind if I _do_." Runabout leaned over, his visor glowing brightly in smug amusement as no matter his tugging Cliffjumper couldn't yank his foot out of Runamuck's grip. Cliffjumper froze as the mech got close enough he could feel that the white mask was _vibrating_ slightly. 

Then it brushed against his foot. 

Gritting his teeth, then biting his lower lip, Cliffjumper tried again to jerk his foot away, but Runamuck just chuckled against the red metal and slowly rubbed the lower half of his face against Cliffjumper's foot, and the jagged pain and smooth vibrating pressure when it passed over the cracked headlight churned his tanks. The white helm angled to catch Cliffjumper's wide, nearly rage-white optics and Runabout's visor brightened considerably.

"I'm rather sure my brother will win, so you'll definitely see more of---"

"No tampering with the pot, Runamuck. You know the rules. Or would your brother perhaps like to _forfeit_?" The cool, High Iacon-accented voice washed over and between minibot and Battlecharger like jagged lightning, and the white mech snapped up and away, dropping the foot he'd been fondling. Despite this, he gave the mini a look over his shoulder that had Cliffjumper shifting with the need to shiver in disgust. Or empty out his tanks.

Breaking away from Runamuck's slithering stare, Cliffjumper looked straight into burning gold instead, grimaced and transferred his glare to the ground. What he _wanted_ to do was bend his knees up against his frame and lean the front of his helm against his knees, but like slag was he going to do that _here_.

So instead he crossed his legs as well as he could while they were tied together, tightened his hands into fists, feeling the tips of his fingers pressing into the palms and tried to ignore the game going on a few (of his) framelengths away.

\--------------------  
Settling back in his chair, Mirage kept his faceplates blank of any expression as the red minibot turned to attempt to melt a hole in the floor and Runamuck finally got back to the table. The Battlecharger had the nerve to angle a smirk at him, the insolent low-life.

Shifting the joints that held the mount to two of his wheels, he had the satisfaction of feeling the stretch and flick of pistons twitching and the wells of the wheels shifting, all without giving anything away. He wasn't leaving anything to _luck_ this time around. He was a skilful player of Praxus Fold 'Em, but neither excellent skill nor mere luck would ensure he won tonight.

Usually, Mirage wasn't very invested in these games. 

Today wasn't "usually" though. Because "usually", the Towers hadn't been blown up by _Autobots_ and he wanted to know which of them had done it. He was further sure the Autobot that was tied to the dancing pole did know who the culprit was. 

Considering his hand and the rest of the players, the smallest of smirks twitched at a corner of his mouth as he handed off two crysmag chips to Needlenose, who, compared to Runamuck, merely put it among the others in the pit. The other players, five in all, variously glared, stared blankly, shrugged, or narrowed their optics at him. No one else added to the pot, however.

Of course, finding out the culprit for the Towers bombing, even if his team had been able to use it to make it _worse_ (for the Autobots), wasn't the _only_ reason he was sitting here today. 

The red minibot wasn't the only mech, or even the only _Autobot_ to sit in the middle of a small fortune's worth of chips, energon, information and sometimes tools. It was, however, the first time Mirage was _interested_.

Laying down his hand at the prompting, Mirage kept his expression flat as whoever-it-was three seats to his left snarled and left the table. 

One down. 

They got new hands and Mirage wasn't entirely displeased by it.

It wasn't as if these games were the only way to get a bit of... entertainment, as it were, and he always got his cut if one of the others in his squad was playing and won. Really, this was a stupendously crude way of attaining something he could still, despite the war, simply send out a comm. ping for if he so dearly wanted it, and get the treatment he'd pay for. 

Which usually was a lot better than the unwilling struggles inevitable from _these_ games.

This time, however... Mirage kept his optics on the table and let his processor do the recalling instead of getting a live reminder. This time, however, wrestling their eavesdropper around and down on the floor and getting use of the energon rope he carried around, Mirage had been... reminded. 

Something about the harsh glow of the Autobot's optics, the way the fear was cloaked in anger and visceral attempts at injuring as much as trying to get _free_ , plus that smaller form struggling against his own...

Someone called it, and they showed their hands. It wasn't his best, but he could make up for it next hand. He'd planned for it, after all. Neither skill nor luck would stop him this time. And compared to some of these wastes of good metal, Mirage could afford the obligatory addition to the pot his bad hand required.

Of course, if turbo foxes got close enough to attack you, you were spectacularly bad or had made a monumental mistake, which Mirage had never had happen to him. But he'd seen it, seen what those vicious creatures could _do_ up close. 

Some of that seemed to have been present during that short and, admittedly, perfectly, gloriously, unfair fight. 

Besides that, however... it'd been merely a whim that had made him put his finger to the mini's lips, but _seeing that_ , the undeniable proof of the differences... Well, Mirage had nearly forgotten that little quirk that never failed to get his engine working a bit faster, mostly because it wasn't just a tiny frame that did it for him.

The minibot in the pit, however, had some pretty pleasing curves and straight angles to him, and the red, while being dinged, deeply scratched and the finish rather... lacking, was attractive enough. 

Then there was those _horns_. 

Wings had never been too interesting; he'd interfaced a few flyers in his days, merely to get a feel for the different types and if it changed or added something, and while wings were more or less sensitive, the experience felt too spread out. Too much surface, even if said surfaces could be _delightfully_ sensitive. Sensor horns, on the other hand, usually were no larger than half his hand at the most and packed with sensor nodes for various reasons.

A lot more contained, a lot less graceless stretching to be done.

" _Fold_." Runabout and Runamuck both glared at him, and while they demanded the dealer check for cheating, none was, of course, found. Mirage tilted his helm, the upper edge of one of his optics _just barely_ allowed into an arched twitch at the Battlechargers before they left.

The biggest threat down.

Mirage was rather sure that while the other three players wouldn't say no to the current pot, he was also pretty sure they wouldn't be risking everything they had in this game just to get their hands on the biggest part of that pot. Mirage, though, wouldn't need to risk everything, even if he _weren't_... ah, tampering, to make sure things went his way.

He still had hics and piles of assets left, metaphorically as well as literally, and wouldn't need to spend more than a pittance in pursuit of winning this game. But he wasn't the type to drag things out unnecessarily, which was part of the reason he was where and with which faction he was. Besides a few other things.

But really, at the moment _how_ he got to where he was had no bearing on anything. What mattered was this game, and winning the pot belonging to it. 

Which he'd do. 

There was, besides everything else, a bit of a dirty thrill in this in a way not even venturing down into the seediest, slag pit bottom-scraping levels of Iacon or Kaon or even _Crystal City_ and buying the most desperate mech or femme he could find could even come close to. Mostly because that that had been about finding the limits of how deep he wanted... could... go. 

This? 

This he just _wanted_.

\-------------------  
Cliffjumper was unsure what result he'd even been hoping for from the game going down, mostly because he refused to think of it as something that would, irrevocably and finally, decide the rest of whatever length of function he had left. 

He'd get away. 

Or get rescued, whichever. He'd take a fraggin' overblown, dramatic rescue that implied he couldn't handle himself if it just got him out of here, and he'd be grateful enough he _wouldn't_ turn Sunstreaker inside out when he got back.

He could admit to being relieved when three individuals in particular left the table, no matter what else. There was technically nothing alarming about the tank-former besides the fact that he was a Decepticon, but something of the look in his hooded optics told Cliffjumper that no matter what else, even if he'd _survive_ the mech, the state might not be desirable. At all. The group he met up with at the exit to the gaming den only strengthened the impression, even if there was, again, seemingly anything wrong with any of _them_ either. 

Then the twins, Runamuck and Runabout left. Cliffjumper bared his teeth as they passed, and despite the dull glow of their visors, the expressions made battle-ready and nervous charge skitter down his circuits, leaving a feeling of something crawling over them.

The last one to have him _worried_ was the one who lost to Mirage, the last one left; the other two who left between that were as bland and impossible to get a feeling for as you probably could get, which might have meant that he should really have been worried no matter what. But somehow the earlier two, and then the last one, a Seeker femme in purple and teal just... set his teeth on edge. 

Maybe it was because she was a Seeker and, together with the tank, one of the two individuals at the table with the most height on him. Maybe it was the way she'd looked vaguely _amused_ through the whole game, as well as the sharp smirk and the air-blown kiss she tossed him right before she wandered by. She was also the only one who neither had no one with her at the table nor joined her by the door.

Of course, in the end, things were bad no matter _who_ won, and the slender, elegantly angled frame of the Decepticon noble standing up from the table had Cliffjumper _very briefly_ curl up. Curl up and glare electrified murder at the mech. Then he straightened up and out because _slag it all to the Well and back_ , he wasn't afraid of some delicate - but strong enough to yank him about - annoyingly _correct_ \- but not above being _way too handsy_ \- Decepticreep. The noble part didn't make anything better.

Might be making it worse, in fact.

"Don't you fraggin' _dare_ touch me, you sticky-tarnished, three-wheeled _cargo hauler_ ," Cliffjumper spat the words out as Mirage stepped into the pit, his three companions from earlier behind him and _maybe_ that had been a bad choice of words, but he just grimaced at the sub-zero glint in those optics, before the slagger suddenly _smirked_ at him. 

It was a tiny, harshly angled thing that nonetheless almost disappeared into the angles and planes of Mirage's faceplates, but the mech didn't come closer.

In fact, at first he simply collected all the _other_ things scattered in the pit, neatly parting it up between the other three Decepticons that had been with Mirage in the Towers building as well as putting away what was apparently his own part of the winnings in his subspace.

Lastly, Mirage held up a cube of high grade and three osmium chips.

"Counterpunch's share, since he's not here but performing a vital task for the mission." So said, the cube and the chips disappeared into Mirage's subspace as well and he stood up. Cliffjumper had started slightly at the mention of a mission, having completely forgotten what the implication might be to where he'd stumbled upon the Decepticons. If they had a mission in Autobot territory he should try to find it out and it was even _more_ important that he get away---

"I _do_ apologise, but I doubt you'd make a very good public dancer, so I'm hardly going to leave you tied to the pole." Mirage leaned over him as Cliffjumper mentally scrambled, managing to _not_ sputter at the words. _Dancer_?! That was what the pole was for!? It made sort of sense, though, and he'd probably have recognised it immediately if the pit and the pole had been in a proper club and not a gaming den.

"Hey! Let _go_!" It was stupid and it was useless, but the yell escaped anyway as the rope attaching him to the pole was cut and he was tossed over Mirage's shoulder again. Around the gaming den, on all levels, the tables closest to the central pit quieted as mechs and a few of the femmes around turned to look, a small sea of ruby points of initially curiosity, and then dry, malicious amusement. 

He kicked, snapping both legs out and forwards, but Mirage caught them before they connected, though the stagger was rather rewarding given what he had to work with. "I'm gonna kill ya, you fragger---!" 

Cliffjumper's optics snapped wide and flared as his vocaliser glitched with the sensor-spike. The crack of metal on metal was surprisingly loud in the large and relatively crowded space and if Cliffjumper had been paying attention, his engine would probably have stuttered from the attention they were suddenly garnering, the no-longer silent circle a lot wider than before. 

Cliffjumper, though, was a lot more preoccupied by the heat of over-stressed sensor nodes resetting, pain spiking down into the layer of circuitry that wrapped around his protoform. His aft wasn't at all as armoured as the rest of him, and that armour was just passable as fighting-grade as well.

"I don't _think so_ , so calm down, please." Mirage stepped out of the pit to a burst of low laughter and Cliffjumper twitched, optics flickering around as he caught on to how many were actually _looking_ , but gathered his thoughts scattered by the strike, and scowled.

"Calm down? Gonna have to give me a fraggin' reason to be _calm_ you---!" The words died in static as Cliffjumper's optics shot wide again and he tried to squirm away, trapped legs twitching in an attempt at another kick. The gathered Decepticons laughed or whistled, though some were by now turning back to their games; this was just a variation on what had happened at least a few times before. 

He'd ignored that Mirage's hand had stayed hovering over his aft after the whack, registering and promptly discarding the feel of a familiarly-unfamiliar field pulsing next to his own. Mostly because he was basically _past_ Mirage's field everywhere else, what with hanging diagonally off his shoulder and all.

Perhaps he shouldn't have forgotten that, because maybe he wouldn't have been _quite_ as surprised as he was at Mirage's hand molding itself to one side of his aft, The warm metal curled about his hip and - worse, so much worse - the thumb was laid along and pressing _into_ the slight gap between hip joint and the middle part of his aft. There was a choked-off and... admittedly, no matter the few brief suspicious touches from right after he got beaten and tied up, Cliffjumper still let out a shocked squawk as Mirage squeezed, his hand easily large enough to encompass the whole and a little more of Cliffjumper's behind.

It took a few moments for Cliffjumper's processor to catch up, but when it did, he snarled and attempted to buck. What he got was Mirage briefly rubbing his thumb along the crevice it was up against and _how the slag_ was he supposed to defend against _that_.

"If you just stay still, this'll be a lot easier for you."

Rage bubbled up, hot and insistent and what he _really_ wanted to do was kick the fragger in his _too perfect faceplates_. If nothing else, it'd hide the floundering feeling of incredulous helplessness. Because how the slag was he supposed to _deal_ with where things seemed to be pointing? Even with Runamuck basically molesting his foot, Cliffjumper hadn't thought much further than that.

Hadn't _really_ thought about what any one of those Decepticons at the table might _want_ to... to do (to him) except maybe beating him up a bit and then killing him or something. 

But the raucous reaction from the audience, now silenced as they'd left the gaming den, the twins' behaviour, the Seeker femme's, and _definitely_ Mirage's hinted at something else. 

Something he didn't, honestly, ever think he'd have to _fight people off_ for, and for the moment... Cliffjumper subsided. Wouldn't ever admit to it either but was definitely staring down at the floor passing by in something like shock.

It didn't last long enough for Cliffjumper _not_ to get seriously torqued about the wheel that basically poked him in the faceplates or scraped up along the side of his helm the whole way through the winding corridors of the place. They went up a floor in a lift and then walked for probably a few kliks more before Mirage went through a doorway. It felt a lot longer than even a few breems, but then, Cliffjumper's patience had been strangled into nothing ages ago. Probably somewhere around having his subspace breached and ransacked.

When the door closed, barely missing clipping the tip of his nasal ridge, Cliffjumper told himself he was _not_ interested in his new surroundings. He didn't need to look around, craning his neck like a nervous protoform out and about for the first time after activation - but resisting the urge proved impossible. 

No matter that it might show the slagging Decepticreep that he _couldn't_ be rattled by whatever was supposed to happen by being at their destination, Cliffjumper gave in. And really, he'd proved with ample proof to spare that he was rattled by the whole fragging thing already. Attempting to not be rattled, or not appear as such anyway, was a lost cause.

The room was clearly lived in, with a few datapads on a cradle-shelf to the side of the door, and, when Mirage swung around after a moment's pause to look around the room for whatever reason, with a number of who knew how many hics of cloth mesh draped over the berth. Cloth mesh that looked too expensive for the room it was in, even if the room was clearly in whatever passed as "high end" in this place. The floor had an attempt at tasteful pattern in bas-relief which actually did it's job passably well even if the material used was slightly less expensive than it tried to pass itself off as.

There was also a rather stunning metal-flake paint on high-relief painting portraying the sonic canyons from a flyer's point of view on the wall opposite of whatever Mirage was walking towards, and clearly the noble felt secure enough about the safety of expensive things in here that he was keeping some of his own things in this room. Because no way was the mesh laying in thick piles on the berth to pad out the slightly "lacking" padding or the painting something that was room-standard, even of a place that---

Had an in-suite washrack?

It shouldn't have surprised him in the way it did, but the surprise bled together with the confusion over what they were _doing_ in here and it was hard to tell the emotions apart and what belonged to which thought. It was... frustrating to be so fragging much at the mercy of his own rattled processor.

"All right, down you go." Suiting action to words, the world tilted and then righted itself as his feet met the floor, smooth and with many tiny grooves carved in it to allow for solvent run-off. "I'd _suggest_ you make use of the room while you're here. I have a few matters to attend to."

Frowning, Cliffjumper nonetheless caught Mirage briefly touching a shoulder, probably the one he'd mentioned being injured in some way back in Iacon, before the mech stepped close and Cliffjumper backed off, immediately on guard again.

Backed off, but had forgotten about the rope still attaching his ankles together at not _quite_ a comfortable distance and would have pitched backwards on his aft if Mirage didn't catch him by the shoulder, energo-knife in hand. It flicked forward too fast to allow the minibot even a wince away; probably just as well as any movement would probably have injured him due to where the knife went.

The incomprehensibly strong but frustratingly thin threads of energon rope that had held his arms up against his chestplates snapped as the knife seemed to melt through them with an easy flick, and then Cliffjumper was free to stumble backwards.

"The frag--?" Attempting to yank out the threads still stuck between the slats of his throat and neck with his hands still tied together wasn't particularly easy and distracted him for long enough that Mirage had time to disappear back beyond the door without any protest or reaction. Then the door was sliding closed and Cliffjumper swore as he stumbled forwards, almost falling over again before he caught himself. Wasting precious seconds, and when he reached the door, it just wouldn't open.

"WHO THE FLYIN' RUSTY FRAG LOCKS SOMEONE UP IN A WASHRACK?!" Cliffjumper yelled, kicking the door as well as he could, and had to listen to the sound of his voice bouncing around the bare metal walls until it finally died down. 

Okay, what now?

He was... alone. 

The door was locked, and he probably wouldn't be able to get it up from the inside, but if he just could get his hands and legs free he'd have a pretty good chance whenever Mirage came back. He wasn't _absolutely slag_ at hand-to-hand, and if he could get the noble while he wasn't fragging invisible like the cheat he was, Cliffjumper thought he'd have a pretty good chance.

Stalking around the room, though, proved pretty useless. There was _nothing_ sharp at all - which, admittedly, would be rather strange to find in the washracks, but Cliffjumper needed just _something_ to go his way. Attempting to use the barest edge of first the panel for the door control and then the one for the washrack controls garnered absolutely nothing.

Well, unless he was supposed to count managing to turn the washracks on and getting himself thoroughly wet and slick with solvent that was probably some custom slag Mirage had somehow specially got for his room. Then he'd certainly accomplished something.

Reluctantly, Cliffjumper ended up turning on the evaporation cycle, and then, in the vague hope that heat might affect the energon rope, turned the thing as high as it would get. But when he'd been standing for more than a breem in heat that had his cooling systems straining and his HUD shriek in angry pink warning colour about how long it was until he overheated, Cliffjumper turned it off.

Pulling at the rope after that gave nothing either, except thin, sharp lines where the rope slid and dug into the metal. After kicking the door once more, Cliffjumper collapsed against the wall and whacked his helm back against it. As if it _hadn't_ had enough abuse the last few cycles.

He was tired.

Admittedly, burning a lot of energon trying to keep himself cooled in the evaporation cycle hadn't been particularly smart. He had no idea when Mirage would be back, and worse, had no way of getting his energy levels back up. Even if his subspace hadn't been cleaned out, the emergency ration would only temporarily have alleviated the problem... But it would have been _something_.

Okay then. 

He'd been a fragging glitch for... well over the three breems he'd been locked in the washrack by now. He'd recharge for just a bit, make sure he came online the _astrosecond_ those doors opened again. 

It'd save him energy to recharge anyway, and regain at least a bit of what he'd just gotten rid of. Right before recharge set in, Cliffjumper was struck by uncertainty whether he should be relieved nothing worse than being locked in the washrack had happened after all the _earlier_ things, or just be more unsettled for what might be _coming_.

His processor didn't have the time to settle on one or the other.


	3. In Which Mirage Plays Interrogator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirage has a somewhat different idea of what makes an effective interrogation method... but then, given Cliffjumper's reactions, maybe it was just the most effective one anyway.

Snapping out of recharge and attempting to stand up, Cliffjumper ended up on all fours, swearing and disoriented. It didn't take more than a few seconds to regain his bearings, and when he did, a grimace briefly flashed over his faceplates along with his optics flaring nearly white for a moment. The door was still closed. Checking his internal chronometer, it became obvious _why_ he'd come online; his recharge cycle was over. A whole fragging joor!

Eyeing the door, Cliffjumper wondered if the place just had excellent soundproofing, or if Mirage really wasn't out there, if he'd just... been left in here? That didn't seem to make any sense, however, but he was left with short-stepped pacing of the washrack room for nearly another breem, thinking up an escape plan for nearly every klik that crawled by. 

When the door actually opened though, the best Cliffjumper had was using his head. Literally, and they _both_ went crashing to the floor, Mirage bouncing once and very satisfyingly. The second he tried to haul himself off of Mirage though, hands on the curved bit of Mirage's chestplates above the pelvic armour, a hand closed about his wrists and with a twist Cliffjumper went from his rather comfortable perch on Mirage's thighs, to his back and hood slamming down on the floor, arms up above his helm.

"You're lucky I am patient, but I did warn you about behaving, didn't I?" Mirage was leaned over, curved over Cliffjumper in a slender arch, knees on each side of the minibots' frame. Cliffjumper scowled and refused to acknowledge how much larger Mirage's single hand keeping his wrists down against the floor was, or the degree of curve to his back which was apparently just so he could stare Cliffjumper right in the faceplates.

"And you're a slow-processor glitch if ya think I'm gonna _listen_ ," Cliffjumper said with a growl and turned his helm aside, ending up glaring at his own arm and the upper slice of the door. So close, and yet not close _enough_.

"Not even for energon?"

Cliffjumper froze, felt every single actuator and cable stiffen and _knew_ he shouldn't turn back. He could see enough of Mirage's faceplates like this, really. Didn't need to turn his helm back to meet that even, mirror-finish expression to know it was probably a trick of some sort. Or if not that, there'd be something _else_.

"What's the _catch_?" The words were dragged up through his vocaliser and mouth feeling like acid, but out they came anyway as Cliffjumper turned his helm back to stare up at Mirage, trying not to reveal the want curling low somewhere in the bottom of his fuel tank. Mirage stared back for a moment, and then tilted his helm down, not close enough to touch the front to Cliffjumper's but there wasn't that much space left. Cliffjumper wished he'd sit up, the fragger.

"None. Except for you to behave while we get off the floor. No kicking or struggling." Mirage smiled around the words, lazy as you please and obviously with all the time in the world. A klik went by, crawling on with the slice of air between their EM fields charged by the differences between them, a prickling, gentle thrumming that made Cliffjumper want to squirm. He stayed... _mostly_ still though, hands flexing a bit and then freezing in fists at the reminder of those long, black fingers easily curved around his wrists.

"Fine." He couldn't _believe_ he was actually taking the chance of trusting the noble, trusting a _Decepticon_ to do as he said he would, especially when there was nothing he could do if Mirage decided _not to_. But he stayed still, glaring at the door while Mirage got off him, long limbs unfolding, and then pulled Cliffjumper upright and put him on the floor.

Eyeing the door beyond Mirage, Cliffjumper guessed it would be locked, and either way... he was still tied up, and beyond that door wasn't an easy few steps into the center of Iacon, but at least a few hics of Decepticon-aligned settlement. 

And he was quite obviously an Autobot.

The sudden whiff of something sharp and airy, pricklingly astringent beneath his nasal ridge had Cliffjumper tilt his helm down in confusion, because he'd already convinced himself Mirage _wouldn't_ do as he'd promised. But there was, indeed, a cube of energon held out. 

Tilting his glance up at Mirage, optics narrowed, Cliffjumper reluctantly bent down the bit needed to drink. It took until half the cube was gone and Mirage was, quietly and without any jerking about or pulling away, tilting the cube for him for Cliffjumper to accept that there appeared to be no funny business going on.

Which might just mean there was something wrong with the energon itself, of course, but if he went down that path, it was more than two-thirds of a cube too late and if he couldn't escape soon, he'd need to refuel again _anyway_ , and he wasn't _quite_ stubborn enough to try and starve himself.

"That wasn't so painful, was it?" Mirage's smirk, however, didn't make Cliffjumper inclined to agree, but the noble continued before he dredged up enough wit to snap something back. "You'll probably not like the next part, however."

"As if I've liked _any_ part so far--- Hey! Let go!" Cliffjumper was honestly getting tired of all the times he'd ended up saying that so far, but he wouldn't just _stop_ , either. Trying to dig his feet in produced a slag-awful protesting shriek and Mirage staggering forwards for half a step before he paused and yanked Cliffjumper forwards and angled slightly up, bringing the minibot's feet off the floor for a moment. They continued that dance for three more skip-steps and then Cliffjumper's aft met the surface of a low, decorative table. 

The thing seemed much too light and delicate to be taking his weight, even less his frame _crashing down_ on it, and it rattled beneath him, vibrations spearing upwards through his frame while Mirage yanked his hands down straight. He got a few good kicks in on the Decepticon's shoulders while Mirage crouched down between his legs. He bent low enough Cliffjumper could reach not just the shoulders and helm, but the mount the wheels were on, and the clear-belled ringing of high-quality metal being struck was interspersed with swearing and the dull thuds of wheels hit.

" _Enough_!" Mirage surged upwards, and Cliffjumper automatically tried to retreated further back, but found himself stuck, energon rope from his wrists now going under the table and tied to the pole. He kicked out, but Mirage stepped back, and was still tall enough to reach, the dull crack not a hand striking a faceplate, but rather something a lot more _solid_ doing so.

The noise that escaped Cliffjumper was partly muffled by the unfortunate fact that he managed to bite his tongue as the handle to an electrowhip cracked him across the faceplates, the edge of it driving in a dent in the edge of his nasal ridge. Processor ringing, Cliffjumper was annoyed to realise he was _surprised_ at the violence. 

Apparently a recharge cycle in peace and basically being allowed to drink without being tricked had been enough to blur the sharpest edges of the few strikes Mirage _had_ dealt him last cycle. He still also had a cracked headlight on one foot, and Cliffjumper shook his helm and glared at the noble as he sat down in one of the chairs facing the table.

"What the frag _now_?" Throwing a look around the room from this position revealed the washrack doors to the right, the berth with its piles of intricately patterned and embroidered mesh cloth up against that wall, the door out of the room right in front of him if he chose to turn that way, and a window behind him. The window revealed an alternately murky and high-contrast view of the gorge between the Iaconian and Vosian continents. 

Flares of soundless light intermittently turned the walls of the gorge into nearly painful displays of overexposed cables, huge jagged plates or tiered sections of metal and curved, curiously patterned rounded such, with depthless shadows in every crevice before the flare faded away and left a quicksilver and rippling blue shadow over alternately gold-toned and gray-blue metal. An electrical storm coupled with reaction flares from the krypton clouds far above patterned the landscape outside in a nearly seizure-inducing display of light and lightning. It was odd not to hear or feel the rolling thunder that should accompany the lightning that could be seen stretching in monstrously huge branches over the sky between the flares of light, but at the same time it meant the settlement was safe.

Turning away from the familiar but silent light-show, Cliffjumper scowled at Mirage, who was sitting leaned back in his chair one foot resting on the other leg's knee, tapping the handle of the whip against his thigh. Cliffjumper's scowl deepened as the moment wore on, and charge crawled through his legs as he had the urge to pull them up, make himself less of a target... But not because of the _whip_ , but rather due to the slow, wandering gaze from those golden optics. 

Cliffjumper realised with an unpleasant start that he had no idea how long Mirage had been _staring_ while he looked around, but it was hard to follow the crawl of those optics from his feet, up along first one leg to the other, lingering for a spark-pulse at his unarmoured hips. 

Then it trailed upwards over the slightly curved chestplates, up to his _neck_ for some reason and then around the edges of his helm and he could just _feel_ the weight of that glowing gaze as it followed each of the angles and the planes of his flat-tipped sensory horns and _then_ dipped down to meet his optics, the upper edges of Mirage's optics arched in mocking inquiry at Cliffjumper's too-bright glare.

"You fraggin', rust-afflicted _creep_!" He'd have said more, was all set on a rant as he yanked his bound hands in an attempt at freeing them, but then Mirage straightened out and leaned forward. 

"It's unfortunate for you, given the circumstances and your reaction to certain actions, that you're cute." Mirage's helm tilted, something like amusement shading his faceplates beside the glow from the optics as he pushed the butt of the whip up under Cliffjumper's chin. 

After a moment of static-fuelled outrage, Cliffjumper's optics narrowed, the colour dark. 

Despite the thorough stare, despite the... the _touches_ , he'd sort of hoped they were mostly to freak him out, which they'd _certainly_ managed to do!

Of course, even that statement might be designed to do so, but Cliffjumper had the uncomfortable creeping realisation, wrapped in some sort of nervousness he didn't completely understand or want to look too closely at, that Mirage was utterly serious. 

Somehow, it still hadn't triggered the reaction the Battlechargers had, but that didn't mean he _liked it_ , still.

Handsy, disgusting Decepticon. 

"And it's fraggin' fortunate for you that I can't punch your... guh, your annoyin' and stupid faceplates in!" He'd almost said something that could've been considered flattering, as impossible as that ought to be. 

HE DID NOT THINK the pit-spawned Decepticon noble was attractive! 

_Especially not_ when he was sitting on a table, said Decepticon leaned forward with an ease in the lines of his frame that somehow was infuriatingly (and on some level terrifyingly) intimate, the handle of an inactive electrowhip pushing his chin up.

Mirage tilted his helm in a nod that was more an acknowledgement of what had been said than agreement, but it was sort of... gratifying, or at least one thing less to have tension snap through his cables for, that the nod contained not even a hint of mocking. Because slag it all, he might be at some _disadvantage_ here, but not as much as he might be against others. Minibot or not.

"Be that as it may, it's not going to happen. And really, if you tell me right now what I want to know, this won't be as... ah, taxing, on you as it probably will be otherwise." Mirage shrugged, and Cliffjumper couldn't read his expression or the tone in his voice at all, but that didn't mean he wouldn't tell the mech _exactly_ what he'd do. 

Or not do, as the case might be.

"The slag I'm goin' to tell ya _anything_ ," hissed Cliffjumper, optics narrowing a bit further, but even as he tried he couldn't push the whip that Mirage was using to tilt his helm up downwards at all. Mirage hummed, helm tilting thoughtfully and drummed his other hand's fingers against a thigh.

"Even when it has nothing at all to do with Decepticon and Autobot 'business', except insofar as it was done as some useless destruction of a 'symbol'?" The sneer was heavy in the noble's voice, and it took a moment for Cliffjumper to realise what Mirage was referring to, what it was he might want to know. 

It seemed like vorns ago he'd been searching through the upper floors of that Towers building... and while the Towers _had been_ a symbol of several things, one could argue how _important_ they'd been as such. Extremely visible they may be, but the substance of their worth as a symbol might have dwindled long ago. 

"One of your compatriots blew up the Towers, I want to know which one." The previously softer, nearly thoughtful glow in Mirage's optics hardened, but it was hardly something to be _afraid of_ , right, so Cliffjumper just grimaced and then sneered.

"As if you're the only one who's lost their home, you stuck up, silvered-protoform glitch."

The clang of the butt of the whip once again hitting and snapping Cliffjumper's helm to the side was loud in the otherwise quiet room. A muted flash behind them bleached the sides of Cliffjumper and Mirage's frames in high-contrast pale blue glow. 

Grimacing and shifting his jaw, Cliffjumper felt some satisfaction from having gotten some sort of more typical reaction out of the 'Con. Something safe, something other than that cool, measured amusement, the looks or the touches or the precise words. Then his chin was grabbed by a hand just large enough to definitely be unpleasant that close to his helm or throat instead of being pushed around by a whip, and blue optics met once-again still golden ones.

"Perhaps so. But I can do quite a few things about it, compared to most others, and therefore, _Cliffjumper_ , you're going to tell me."

"Wh-- How the _slag_ do ya know that!?" Cliffjumper stared, flabbergasted, and was _almost_ too distracted to attempt to pull back from the thumb doing a little circle over his cheek, then tracing the groove that led down to the angled part of his jaw. Couldn't the mech keep his damn hands to himself for even a few _astroseconds_?

"You're hardly _unknown_ , you must understand." Mirage cocked the upper edge of an optic, the subtlety of the meaning to the glow and colour lost in the frequent bleaching flashes from the outside. "Given that we knew the Prime was out there, we ran a simple check yesterday after we were back here against the known core group the Prime is known to have gathered around him. And you, my dear Cliffjumper, are right among them."

"Yeah?" Narrowing his optics, Cliffjumper wasn't sure he actually _believed_ the Decepticon. "How come--"

"You're here, and not in Kaon, or on the way there?" Mirage shrugged and withdrew his hand, tapping a parting finger against Cliffjumper's chinguard. "No one else knows, _for now_. And if you tell me what I want to know, they might never _get to know_." The last was whispered right into an audial as Mirage leaned over, lips just brushing against one of the depressions cut into the side of Cliffjumper's helm. 

Huffing, Cliffjumper stiffened, glaring at the door on the other side of the room and _almost_ considered it. Even opened his mouth, but then snapped it closed because Mirage's promise? 

Didn't include anything like 'if you tell me, I'll make sure you end up back in Iacon, no worse off than you are now.' As such, then, what Mirage _had_ promised, meant slag-sucking scrap-all.

There was a nearly painful-seemingly slow release of an exvent from Mirage as he straightened, and Cliffjumper caught the tail-end of a smirk.

"Thought not. We do this my way, then."

Mirage _moved_ , then, and along with a few quickly strung together reaction flashes of bluish overexposure and lightning from the window behind them, it was disorienting enough Cliffjumper barely had the time to squawk and attempt to kick before he found himself slung over Mirage's lap, arms trapped beneath him by his own weight and a hand on his back.

"What the--- Ya know, I hardly think this is a good angle for whippin' someone," Cliffjumper said with a sneer, his being uncomfortable for the moment not capable of overriding his mouth, but he certainly didn't like the fact that he couldn't _see_ whatever suddenly started up with a smooth, purring hum behind him. 

Slagging hood was in the way. 

He did think he recognised the sound, however, but without a visual cue, he couldn't quite grasp it. It didn't sound like an electrowhip, however, and Cliffjumper wasn't sure what else it _could_ be.

"If I actually _was_ going to whip you, then yes, this is an absolutely _terrible_ angle for it." Mirage's agreement carried notes of amusement and as if he knew something Cliffjumper didn't, which... well, considering that he was holding whatever it was---

Whatever...

"The glitchin' slag are you _doin'_!" Cliffjumper yelped - though he'd prefer to call it a bellow, he knew very well that wasn't what it was - couldn't reach far enough to _hit_ anything with his legs and squirming just pushed the buffer more firmly against the back of the hood where Mirage had started out, making smooth, careful little circles. 

"I never said I was going to whip you, now did I? I did, however, mention that you might feel unfortunate that you have had particular reactions to some of the actions you've been exposed to lately." Mirage's voice, which normally had a rather pleasant thrumming quality to it, had now deepened with his fake-innocent amusement, and Cliffjumper squirmed at the sound, froze and ground his teeth.

"You---I---Slaggin' scrap!" Sputtering, Cliffjumper tried to collect his thoughts, to come up with anything but the thing Mirage wanted to make him _stop_. 

For the moment that buffer was nowhere that could be considered sensitive or near such a location, but it fragging well didn't matter! Merely the insistent pressure of it over the metal as the buffer dug in and then when its motion smoothed out again was too much. Too intimate for the thing being held and done by a _Decepticon_ , too...

The buffer finished it's dance over the arch of his hood, agonisingly _pedantically_ went over his back and the sides of his waist and then hummed out over the curve of his hip joint.

" _Stop it_!" Angrily, engine sputtering rage, embarrassment and unwanted flickers of... well, something that fragging well didn't belong here, Cliffjumper attempted to push away, but the hand pressing down on his back was insistent, and he didn't have as good leverage as he needed to get up.

"You could always tell me what I want to know." Insistently, the smooth, slightly dragging slide of the buffer followed the rounded curves of one hip joint, was carefully angled to catch the straight lines of the central part of his aft and went over to the other, and despite the slightly vibrating pressure, Cliffjumper knew that, almost unarmoured or not, his hips weren't the worst parts. Not that he wanted to have it go anywhere further, worse parts or not---

"SLAG YOU!"

Mirage had to trap the leg he wasn't holding up underneath the seat of the chair and hook a leg around it to keep Cliffjumper manageable as the buffer slid between his inner thighs, lingering, spreading warmth... and then continued down the rounded metal of his thighs as if it hadn't paused.

The slag he was going to reveal it was Sunstreaker. 

A bit of _buffing_ couldn't make him spill that, even as Mirage's hand slid around the knee-joint of his other leg. This was fragging _incomprehensible_! He couldn't _believe_ he had some Decepticon _buffing him_ as an... as... interrogation method? 

Not that it wasn't sort of working Cliffjumper had to admit as warmth crept along his circuits. Warmth that usually meant something good and a chance to relax into the soothing thrum of the buffer right now sliding over the tip of his foot, pausing to precisely press into the pointed end before it slid up over the toe part and up along his lower leg.

There was no way to be relaxed from _this_ however and Cliffjumper gave a startled noise as he was flipped over, one of Mirage's legs thrown over his knees to keep him from kicking as the buffer brushed slowly over over his chestplates. Cliffjumper jerked his helm up and to the side, glaring at the floor while the buffer worked in minuscule circles and somehow got nearly every angle possible even as his hands were tied together.

He just... was _not_ \---

"Wait---" 

Mirage paused for an infinitesimal moment at the bottom edge of the right side of his helm, meeting Cliffjumper's suddenly near-white optics with a cocked helm. 

A flare of light rendered them both pale and washed in krypton blue, then a wave of darkness that made the glow from their optics painfully bright in the gloom. A flare of lightning followed, and the buffer continued upwards.

Cliffjumper bucked and tossed his helm, but the buffer went with the movement, but surprisingly avoided the horn when it reached the base and was instead wedged between helm and hood, to get at the back. 

But it _was_ coming, Cliffjumper was sure, and he wasn't sure he could... 

It wasn't that the barest touch on the horns would throw him over some edge into overstimulated bliss or whatever stupid protoform tales people had about sensor horns, but the sort of insistent, constant pressure, the unending sensory feedback would soon snap the tightly bunched sensors into overdrive and---

The minibot's engine kicked up a notch, gaining a slightly whining undertone as he tried to tilt his helm away, but the edge of the buffer went up against the left horn, and Cliffjumper just _knew_ Mirage wasn't going to be quick.

Even just that simple following of the base took nearly half a klik, warmth already sparking into actual charge that went into circuits and he did _not_ want the slagger to be doing anything to his horns, not with that buffer, even if he'd already been all over elsewhere---!

"STOP IT!"

The buffer pressed in slightly closer, and he couldn't fraggin' _think_ of what else to do.

"Stop that fraggin' thing right now! It was Sunstreaker, okay!?" Immediately, he snapped his vocaliser off, but it was too little, and too late. 

Shame slammed up against the inside bottom of his intake valve and he had to take a very measured vent-cycle to keep the energon where it belonged. It wasn't even just that he'd done what the Decepticreep had _wanted_ , but the fact that some tiny, angry part whispered viciously that Sunstreaker could take it, _deserved_ him revealing his designation; it was his fault Cliffjumper had ended up here, after all. 

It made him feel like slag.

But the buffer was turned off, and suddenly he was on his back again and---

"Didn't you say you were gonna _stop_?" hissing, Cliffjumper felt angry at himself for having said anything, for having _believed_ the fragger as something cool and slick poured over his hood and back and tricked a shiver out of him. A cloth quickly followed.

"I promise not to touch the horns, how's that? It just wouldn't be proper personal care to stop before the finish, though."

Sputtering, Cliffjumper ended up tense and quiet, but Mirage, for once, kept to the letter of his promise and didn't resvisit his horns at all. 

There was a pause somewhere around the careful rubbing of the oil to leave fresh, reflective metal in its wake at his arms, Mirage's helm tilting and the glow from his optics going soft with listening. Then he nodded and continued, but his movement became quicker. 

No less precise, but not quite as lingering, and when he was done - having left Cliffjumper's horns alone as promised - Cliffjumper was left with angry, tight charge in his pistons that couldn't get anywhere and was sitting on the table again, this time both hands and legs tied to the pole beneath.

"Not the most comfortable spot in the room to sit in, but the easiest to tie you to that you might be comfortable with so I hope you'll forgive me," Mirage said with a little wink and a perfunctorily half-bow before he swept out of the room. 

Cliffjumper stared, optics wide, engine thrumming with the need to _fight_ , to _move_ , and being quite unable to do either of those.

... Mirage was gone.

He was getting the slag out of here, right now, _somehow_!


	4. In Which There's a Discussion, and Cliffjumper Almost Gets Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets revealed what Mirage and the other Decepticons were hiding out in his Towers building for, Cliffjumper manages to (temporarily) escape, and both Slipstream and the Battlechargers make an appearance.

Not that that "somehow" was easy to produce. This time, he didn't have his legs free and the table was bolted to the floor. What he didn't get was the curious... respect? as if! Allowance? Well, whatever it was that had led Mirage to tie him to the table, instead of in one of the chairs, or worse, the bed. 

It was really fragging stupid, but just having to look at the chair in which Mirage had sat in out of the edge of his vision was displeasing enough, if he'd either had to _sit_ in it or look straight at it, the unsettled curl along his circuits would be worse.

And the _bed_? 

He might not have been even close to it yet, but given the situation and the behaviour of the Decepticons so far - even (especially) Mirage, despite the brief dip into something looking suspiciously like decency for now - being tied to the bed would've been...

Shaking his helm, Cliffjumper tried to focus on what he was _doing_ , and not everything else around him, however hard that was.

"Come _on_ , for the love of Primus frag it all---" grumbling, Cliffjumper resisted the urge to yank on the energon thread that tied him to the table. It'd just dig in, and it'd disrupt what he was doing. The delicate hum of a tightly controlled soundwave set the outer layer of his horns itching, but this, when he'd actually remembered it, was the closest he might get to get out of the stupid ropes.

Energon rope was thin, flexible, energy-efficient to make and great at distributing the strength of whoever was tied up in it along its _whole_ length which meant that while someone who very strong would eventually break it, it'd take a while. 

There _were_ ways to disrupt its energy pattern, however. It just required some basic knowledge of soundwaves, the ability to produce them, and lots of patience.

"Fragging Primus to the Well and back on a sparkly tricycle!" 

Something Cliffjumper admittedly didn't have a lot of, and if he _just_ had been somebody like Prowl, or Jazz or Blaster... any of those would've had, for various different reasons, an easier time of breaking the rope.

Cliffjumper was none of them, however, and he was also keenly aware of the fact that he didn't have all the time on Cybertron to get out. Behind him, the storm was abating and somewhat shifting, wind and lightning thinning and driving away the thick masses of krypton gas clouds. 

The flashes of light were nearly gone now, which Cliffjumper was grateful for; a prolonged light-reaction storm was sort of processor-ache inducing. Instead the electrical storm had picked up, along with the wind, but that brought less side-effects on actual frames, and it wasn't hard to keep his concentration through the flashes of light-dark of lightning instead of the disorienting overexposure of krypton blue.

But the storm changing reminded him of the time slipping by; he'd been sitting here, optics squinted and keeping his pistons locked so the energon thread that tied him to the table's support pole where it joined the rope around his wrists was angled against the nominally sharper edge of the angle of the table's surface, and channelling the needed frequency of sound to around his wrists.

It was making his fingers ache as well as setting his horns itching, and he'd been sitting here for five breems already. He had no idea how soon whatever Mirage had been called away for would end, and how quickly Mirage would be back after that. 

And the door was locked. 

He _needed_ to at least get out of the door before the 'Con was back, because between that door and wherever the exit was, he still had a whole settlement to get through as well.

"Fraggin' _please_ \---gah!" With a sudden, air-sucked-out pop, the energon rope gave away and Cliffjumper fell backwards, back hitting the table and then he continued _off it_ since the table was slightly too small to hold all of him. He ended up wedged between the window and the table, awkwardly angled and legs up in the air.

Well, at least no one saw _that_. With a grunt, Cliffjumper rolled to the side and got upright. He still had threads of bright pink thread around each wrist and ankle, and they'd go nowhere until he got the chance to cut them off, but he wouldn't waste time finding something sharp in here to do that. They might be fine lines of faint heat reminding of their purpose, but that purpose had been nullified so he'd just get the frag _out of here_.

The door _was_ locked as he found out after running up to it, rubbing his horns to try and get rid of the ache and itch in various appendages at once. Attempting some standard unlocking sequences did nothing and for a brief moment, Cliffjumper couldn't think of anything else but to kick at the door, fighting to keep the frustrated yell inside.

"Okay, stop it." 

Scrubbing his hands down his face, the minibot grimaced as he caught sight of the liquid, high-reflective surface his armour had suddenly become and had the irrational urge to take something to it until the finish disappeared. 

Shaking his helm and nearly _yanking_ out the standard jack from where it was tucked under the edge of his helm, Cliffjumper paused as he bumped...

Oh right.

With vicious pleasure, he tore off the comm. disruptor and tossed it to the ground, then ground his foot down on it. Wouldn't help him send out a message until he could get to something like a public comm. terminal; there'd be no one close enough to pick up anything out here since he didn't have the reach on the in-frame comm. 

It still was hard to resist and Cliffjumper even opened the emergency comm. channel up as he forced open the panel to the door controls and plugged in. His comm. couldn't fuzz with silence; it was simply open and waiting, but with a grimace Cliffjumper closed it down again.

He had no way to know, but given the rather _blatant_ Decepticon styling in the gaming den and some of the clientèle, he doubted there was an Autobot border force close... And even if it were, who's to say someone wasn't _listening in_ , just waiting for an Autobot errantly close, especially asking for assistance on the emergency channel.

When the door slid open after a few kliks of fighting with the locking codes over hardline, Cliffjumper froze, then peeked out. The corridor outside was empty, the right hand side leading out onto a balcony, a wind-meter warning above the door shining a cautionary purple. 

Disconnecting from the door controls, Cliffjumper looked left, ending up looking at a lift, and while he hesitated in that directions first he went up to the door out to the balcony instead, running down the corridor and skidding outside.

The wind made him skid and stumble _sideways_ for a few steps before he activated the weak magnetic locks in the bottom of his feet and stopped his slide. The purple warning was earning its keep, but he had to make sure he really couldn't take this route.

"Fraggers." He couldn't hear himself speak, merely felt the vibration from his vocaliser as the wind stole his words while he came up to the edge and gripped the railing to check. 

Down revealed several more levels, interspersed with shiningly slick metal sheets that reflected the lightning when it sparked across the sky and was actually spitting static electricity on its own, slithering in an inconsistent blue net over the metal. 

Even if he _could have_ climbed the vertical walls which didn't even reveal any grooves or seams in them, he'd be dealing with sore joints after just a short distance and risk something locking up, even with insulation. 

Up was more of the same and at least one more level before around a hic of just that smooth, reflective metal sheet wall. 

If he just had a slagging _jet pack_ or something...

Well, that'd also include him having gotten to _keep it_ from when the 'Cons raided his subspace. With a growl Cliffjumper stalked back inside, shaking himself when the door closed behind him and his gyros reset from not having to compensate from the constant wind attempting to tear him off his feet.

Optics flickering between the doors as he once again ran down the corridor to the other end, Cliffjumper felt a stupid amount of relief as he got to jam the call button for the lift without anyone having come out of any of the other rooms and seen him. 

It was doubtful he'd have the same luck all through this, and he needed some sort of _weapon_ , but maybe this would actually _work_...

The door slid open with a muted little announcement trill, and Cliffjumper took part of a step forward before his processor connected to the realisation of what his widening optics were seeing and he froze for a precious second. 

Froze, and then threw himself backwards with a static-laced swear just as a black arm whipped out and stopped the doors from sliding closed. 

The hand got his wrist, and he was yanked forward hard enough he met the opposite pair of doors face-first. He tossed his helm back, the hood adding extra weight and armour as it crashed into a chestplate, but while the mech _grunted_ , he didn't fall back.

He didn't let go of the hands he was now squeezing behind Cliffjumper's back either, hard enough there was the protesting noise of air being squeezed out as more delicate workings were compressed.

" _Let go_ , ya fermentin' grease-sta--" Cliffjumper would've exploded if he _could have_ , but having a gag suddenly shoved into his mouth and locking itself there put a damper on _that_. 

Suddenly, he was very, very aware of the fact that up until now, his only way to _protest_ , effectively or not, had been verbally. And now he couldn't even do _that_ as rope was _once again_ deftly wrapped around his wrists and his kicks were ignored as a leg was shoved up between his and he couldn't touch the floor. At all.

A hand on the back of his hood kept him from attempting another helmbutt, and then Runabout leaned close, a vague reflection of the black Battlecharger's red visor in the metal right up next to Cliffjumper's faceplates.

"Thanks for runnin' right into our arms, Autobot. Made things a lot easier."

\--------------------

Despite the bubbling irritation, Mirage had to concede it might have been a good idea to step away from the situation in his room. 

He needed some distance to formulate how he wanted to go about anything else from here. He might have gotten a shade carried away while trying to get the designation of the Towers bomber out of the minibot. Who could _blame him_ , though? All that kicking and squirming right there in his lap...

The door swished open as it confirmed his frequency and Mirage put the thoughts of "minibot" out of his processor and turned it over into "Autobots" instead. Not particularly hard since it was related considering the topic of the meeting, but to be honest he'd rather have been thinking of the now-shiny mini stretched out over his lap and those curiously armour-bare hip joints and aft... 

Shaking his helm, Mirage gave the room a cursory glance; it was usually a good idea to be aware of your surroundings after all. It was a simple room, tucked away in an inconspicuous hallway at the back of the gaming den proper. Lacking windows, the only lights came from pinkish-golden light fixtures set into the ceiling, imitating the early midday light that _would_ have been washing the world outside if there wasn't a storm still going on. 

Taking his place by the table, Mirage unearthed the cube and the chips he'd put away and slowly held them out for the blue mech across from him. Counterpunch had twitched when he'd activated his subspace and while he accepted the items easily enough, there was a tightness around his optics and a sharp, nearly brittle flatness to his lips. 

Mirage couldn't figure out how Counterpunch seemed like he'd fall apart if something moved too fast out of the corner of his vision, but yet spoke with a conviction and insistent brutality as long as he knew where everything was and what was going on.

"We're all present, then, excellent. I was wondering if you had been delayed for some reason, Counterpunch," said Catlin, sitting leaned back in his chair and turning over a jack in his fingers, the cable it belonged to wound around his right arm and disappearing up underneath the shoulder armour. 

Counterpunch tightened like an over-tuned vibro-knife, as if someone had put in a too-strong power cell and turned it on before he slumped back in his seat and shrugged.

"It was... more difficult than I had anticipated, and I only got part of what we needed." There was no apology in the rough words, a grating challenge behind them that Catlin met with a delicate little twitching tilt of his helm and a spreading of his hands.

"How, then, do you propose we perform our task?" Catlin spoke in a deceptively soft, even voice as he leaned forward, elbows on the table and tenting his hands. "You said you'd be able to get access codes to the Decagon within the projected time-frame, and this time we're not just _selling information_ to the Decepticons, we _are_ the Decepticons and I believe we'll have quite a few important people rather upset with us if we don't... perform." The glow from Catlin's oversized visor was dim, and several more cables were now curling about his limbs like quickly-solidifying energon evaporate after a storm along the shores of the Rust Sea.

"Needlenose has our disguises ready, and I hardly need to ask if Mirage or Flagrant are ready to do their parts, because they _are_."

That last, Mirage knew, was a rather unfair comparison. His and Flagrant's parts in this, after all, was due to his electro disruptor and her handy little ability of being unnoticed, in a crowded room or on an empty street, despite the rather terrible neon and _clashing such_ that her colours were. 

Counterpunch glared dully at Catlin, who merely cocked his helm, the ten-some cables wrapped around the tall, extremely thin mech rippling when nothing else so much as twitched or shifted.

"If you'd let me _finish_ I'd have said I _do_ have the schematics for the Decagon, so we'll have a map of where we want to go, _and_ \---" holding up a hand as Catlin seemed set to speak, causing those gaunt, if yet elegant in a severe way, faceplates to tighten. "You've got an Autobot, don't you?"

All four in the room looked at Counterpunch, various expression of confusion or derision on their faceplates. 

Yes, they _did_ have an Autobot available, but hacking him to get to the specific access codes and passwords for the Decagon would take too long, even for Catlin. 

Before Catlin could express the dismissive sneer that flickered right on the edges of his optics and in the lines around his mouth, Counterpunch continued, looking at Mirage while he played with a vibro-knife he'd unearthed from somewhere.

"Get some stasis cuffs on him, bring him with us, and I know a way to use him as a proxy if we can plug him in any door controls without tripping the alarms... The stasis cuffs'll keep him disoriented."

Mirage narrowed his optics, thinking it over, but it did... sort of make sense. 

Keeping somebody in stasis cuffs but not on a quite strong enough setting to put them in complete stasis lock would leave the processor sluggish, and Cliffjumper wouldn't even actively need to open the doors. They'd just need a way for the mini to _think_ about them while believing himself somewhat secure... It ought to trip the doors open if he was connected to them.

Sitting back in his chair, Catlin stared narrowly at Counterpunch, but he must've known with greater certainty that this method had a good chance of succeeding as after a moment he nodded shortly.

"Good. Make sure you don't _break him_ before our mission, then, Mirage." Catlin's nearly sour expression melted into liquid mockery, and Mirage felt the struts in his back stiffen and the armourplates tighten up and flatten. Straightening up, the glow of his optics cooled into a dim flicker while the colour almost edged into amber.

"Compared to some of the company present, I don't _break_ my toys."

Needlenose chuckled, a light, brief thing and Flagrant outright laughed, the brassy sound of bells while Catlin's visor flickered and his EM field obviously _heaved_ , static and ozone pricking their lips--- And then the nominal leader of their little 'squad' settled and Mirage did as well. The other three straightened up.

"We've got a few more things to discuss, so let us perhaps get to those and we can all have some more free time." 

Waving a hand, Catlin was once again collected and while there was a tension hovering in the air, settled somewhere in the fields above the helms of Catlin, Mirage, and... unsurprisingly, Counterpunch, the atmosphere was as relaxed as it'd get here.

Counterpunch was, after all, almost always tightly strung, his field like liquid struck by a constant rainfall, uneven and painfully tense. It was nothing to pay attention to, and Mirage and Catlin's little little clash wasn't overly unusual either.

In the end, the meeting took longer than Mirage would have liked, and it ended with him tense and vaguely annoyed, both for obvious reasons and some he couldn't pinpoint at all, which was rather frustrating. 

The second the door to his rooms slid aside and he _wasn't_ met with some sort of defensive or aggressive verbal abuse as the only defence the mini admittedly _had_ Mirage realised something was wrong. 

The empty room confirmed it, as did the non-reactive lengths and shorn off bits of energon rope on the floor by the table. Apparently keeping Cliffjumper tied up where he'd had access to an edge had been a bad idea. Mirage had just not thought the minibot would actually be capable of the patience and prolonged production of the frequency needed to disrupt the rope...

As his foot brushed the nearly powdered pieces of the comm. disruptor, he had to admit he'd underestimated Cliffjumper. 

But _where_ was he now? 

There was just _no way_ an Autobot had managed to get the whole way from this location up and out of the settlement, even if his rooms were quite far up. Cliffjumper was much too obviously an Autobot, from his insignia, to his attitude, to the optics... and well. His size. There was currently, in this settlement at least, no Decepticon minibots... and everybody currently present at the settlement would know he'd been 'taking part' in the game yesterday.

That meant that _somebody_ had taken advantage of the opportunity when they found the mini wandering around. But really, who could fault them? Cliffjumper was anywhere from only barely two thirds to about half the height of most present, was stubbornly feisty even when angry and afraid and had some pleasant lines and curves overall.

Scowling, Mirage whirled around, slamming his hand down on the door controls, barely noting that it was obvious Cliffjumper had gotten out and no one had gotten in since his locking sequence had been broken from the inside, and ended up staring at the lower rounded end of a teal canopy plus some shapely turbines.

"Slipstream." Mirage took half a step back, inclined his helm and then tilted it back up and then a little further so he could look her in the faceplates. The sparkle in her optics made Mirage stiffen up, his own optics narrowing minutely before he relaxed, shifting the wheel wells in his wheel mount to facilitate it.

"Lord Mirage," said Slipstream, her helm cocked, an angle to her words and a twitch around the corner of her lips that _almost_ seemed sincere. Mirage shook his helm and spread his hands, but didn't get further before she continued, apparently not playing quite the amount of games as she usually did. "You seem to have lost something." She peered behind him, and Mirage kept from throwing an exasperated stare at the floor.

"Perhaps. You have some information to share with me?" He wouldn't be entirely surprised if it turned out Slipstream had picked his escaping Autobot up; not because she was necessarily overly interested in Cliffjumper himself, but rather for the leverage since _Mirage_ certainly was.

"I might." She leaned against the frame of the door, folding her arms over her cockpit and turbines, inspecting the fingers of one hand before she tucked it in the crook of an arm. "I want the silver disc for that, however." For a brief moment, all pretence at humour or even sharp-edged sarcasm fell away for simple seriousness.

"The green one's a dud, then?" 

She was the one who'd cleared both of those discs as suitable for part of the pot, so she'd know, after all. But to that, Slipstream just shook her helm, the glow in her optics back to its normal little tinkling flickers.

"No, but it's the silver one I am after." The easy dismissal might have been suspicious, but Mirage found himself believing her. Question was just if it was _worth it_. 

Given the meeting earlier, it was obvious it'd have to be worth it, though. It'd be the easiest way, if Counterpunch was right, to get into the Decagon. So on that ground only, it was certainly worth it, and really, he'd gone through a bit too much effort just to let go _now_.

"Fine." With a huff, Mirage withdrew both discs and then put the green one back, holding the silver one up but not offering it. The smile that had been absent on Slipstream's faceplates now appeared again, a sharp, but surprisingly open thing. Open with its mocking nature, anyway, though this time she'd be giving up what she knew and he didn't, which usually wasn't the case.

"The Battlechargers, of course. They've seemed quite invested since yesterday... Or they just don't know how to get something small like that without _breaking it_ before getting to the fun part." She didn't laugh, but the dismissive little gesture and the glance tossed down the corridor spoke of her non-concern all the same. "You _may_ want to hurry." She did laugh then while taking the offered datadisc and letting it disappear into subspace, moving away from the doorway as Mirage stepped out and the doors closed and locked behind him.

\--------------------

The edge of his knee pad hit Runamuck square in his faceplates, the crack accompanied by the brighter, more brittle sound of the bottom edge of the visor being shattered. The white mech nearly toppled over, and Cliffjumper had the gyro-turning non-pleasure of seeing the floor pitch closer and then get further away as Runabout pulled his brother back upright.

"Bad idea." No time to figure out who growled that, but it was probably Runabout, since he _wasn't_ the one carrying him tossed over a shoulder. Cliffjumper ended up more occupied by the ringing crack that struck his helm with enough force to smack it into the side of the hood than who had said what. 

That was nothing to how the strike had been focused on one of the sensory horns, though.

The flash that (seemingly) erupted somewhere behind his optics but not quite at the base of the horn preceded the spike of garbled sensory information and pressure, crudely made into that singular thing called pain as error alerts flared up.

Not that Cliffjumper was aware of any of that for the first few moments, the HUD and his vision simply not registering as his processor tried to sort of what just had happened. Then a few things reset, enough of the information got processed and the pain actually _hit_. 

He'd have moaned if he could, but with the gag actively cancelling out any soundwaves, he couldn't even feel himself doing it. Staring vaguely at the floor going by for what just felt like a klik, at the most two, but ended up more than a breem, his jolt at the realisation was met with a rattling whack to his aft... 

And then those fingers spreading in what was _definitely not_ a strike, but the vague bucking got him nothing, since by now, he couldn't really kick. At all. What was it with people carrying someone over their shoulder that made them go for the _aft_ if you protested?

Shaking his helm and grimacing around the gag as that caused a wavering spike of pain and error messages to follow in its wake, Cliffjumper bit down on the stupid thing in his mouth in frustration. It was too big to exert much force, but it was something to focus on as he came back to that this wasn't good.

Not that, really, the situation had been any better back in Mirage's rooms, because no matter if this somehow - strangely - felt more threatening, he _sincerely fragging doubted_ he'd be better off with the noble.

The room he was carried into _this time_ was obviously smaller than the one Mirage had, and that's as far as he got before he was flying, slamming into one of the Battlechargers-- the white hand revealed it to be Runamuck. 

Swearing, if only in his own processor, Cliffjumper managed half a helmbutt before an arm came up around and grabbed the lower half of his face. 

Effectively a headlock, but it'd be slagging _generous_ to call it a headlock really. Because headlocks didn't include fingers lazily stroking along the grooves in his face and tracing the outline his lips made against the gag or pushing the gag slightly inwards, even when it had _nowhere to go_.

"Feisty, ain't he?" Runamuck snickered somewhere above and behind him while Runabout had to dodge Cliffjumper's kicks, quick, snappy things in attempts at holding the mech off as much as hitting the fragger anywhere at all possible.

"Be kinda boring, otherwise, but for now..." Runabout glared down at the mini caught up against the mech behind him, his legs not even the full length of Runamuck's, so it was no wonder the black Battlecharger was probably really sort of annoyed that he had to deal with flailing legs that his brother could easily trap. "I've had enough of this." 

One foot was caught even if that meant a numbing blow to the back of the hand as the back of the foot clipped it, and then Runabout surged forwards. 

Pushing the foot he'd caught roughly forwards with the movement, Cliffjumper ended up squished between his own leg and Runamuck as Runabout settled between his legs. First one knee was planted on the knee joint of the leg the black mech had avoided and then, as they fought for control of the other leg and Runabout won after he got whacked in the shoulder, Cliffjumper was... decidedly pinned.

For a few astroseconds, everything just... froze, and black, sticky panic swamped his circuits. The feel of his EM field, sharp about his horns and snapping against two others', unstuck time as the hand around his jaw tightened.

"Stop that," hissed Runamuck right above the curving edge of his hood, fingers digging into gray metal. 

His optics narrowed, and if Cliffjumper _could have_ , he'd have snarled. As it was, his engine spat short little revs. If hammering the fraggers the only way he _could_ meant giving them a static pressure processor ache from over-tuning his EM field wilfully, that's what he'd _do_.

He probably wouldn't be able to keep it up long; he wasn't used to consciously controlling his EM field to this extent for any greater length of time but even an astrosecond was longer and more than he'd have without it. 

Someone's fist hit his left hip, and Cliffjumper bucked, which just resulted in Runabout leaning down harder and Runamuck laughing, right before he drew his field in and lashed _out_ \---

Then lightning cracked, scudding along the surface of his field and disrupting it as Runabout snapped down an elegantly slender and three-pronged implement against his chestplates. The charge snapped against his field, went through it, and hit his armour. 

In particular, two of the three prongs were jammed into the very faint crack that revealed one of the plates that covered his spark chamber cavity.

The yell died before it was even formed, absorbed by the gag, and even if he _tried to_ he couldn't stop the twitching as charge and pain danced down his limbs. He might be protected against his own static electricity, and from some outwards influence as well, but jamming a vibro-knife with an additional electric power cell into a seam wasn't anything he could be reasonably protected against.

He tried to smack his helm back through the angry, glittering pain, but Runamuck's hand just tightened, squeezing out a protesting squeal of metal against metal but that didn't matter. 

He _needed_ to keep his chestplates closed. It was like trying to cup energon in his hands, however, as every wave of electricity whacked against his concentration and the locking mechanism.

Runabout pressed the knife further down and in and then _wriggled_ it. 

His vision glitched at the flare of disruptive charge, as did his vocaliser, but the static went unheard and then control slid away like sunlight fleeing an electric storm. Cliffjumper's engine whined, and he did _not_ want to look, his vision helpfully resetting a few times and bleeding colours into shapes into focus.

One of Runabout's hands were at the edge, a simple way of keeping the hexagonal cavity open and when the vibro-knife was lifted, Cliffjumper, even if he'd rather have _done something_ froze, optics flickering as he followed its path and wondered if it'd crack the see-through, pinkish-purple sheet of interlocking crystal plates that were the _next_ layer of defence.

"Cute. Tiny." Runamuck chuckled above him, running a finger after the path of the vibro-knife which, luckily, did not jam down in any of the faint seams and wasn't stabbed down in an attempt to _crack_ the crystal either. 

Cliffjumper vented noisily and managed to get enough control to slam out an unfocused wave of his field. The Battlechargers twitched, and the finger that had been scraping the crystal hard enough to set it rattling pushed down against one of the ports.

"Don't mess anything up before we're _done_ idiot." 

The hand was slapped away, but really, it was too late for not messing anything up. Not that Runamuck and Runabout would care about Cliffjumper wanting to curl up and hide what had just been exposed.

His spark chamber may still be closed off and further covered by the layer of crystal, which laid around the six ports surrounding the chamber as well as the circuitry curling around the spark chamber and plugged into it, but it was still bared... as was the ports and the accompanying cables, curled around them. 

Three for charge exchange, three for sensory and even if the crystal layer covering the spark chamber wasn't touched at all, Cliffjumper felt trapped. Trapped and exposed and---

His field lashed out again, wobbly but all the more sharp for that as Runabout trailed a few fingers about the charge exchange ports, attempting to push his smallest finger into the opening of one of them, to get at the delicate connectors within.

"Slagging---!" The whack against the crystal layer and the ports cracked nothing, but that didn't mean it was _gentle_ , and Cliffjumper was sort of relieved he had a gag. He wouldn't have wanted to give them the _satisfaction_ of screaming. 

Runabout leaned close, the red of his visor bright and overbearing, much like the frames Cliffjumper was trapped between. 

"Perhaps something to _distract you_ will stop all this _squirmin'_ , huh?"

Optics growing wide, Cliffjumper couldn't do much more than stare as Runabout's chestplates slid apart to reveal an array much like his own, sized slightly larger of course. Runamuck reached above Cliffjumper and trailed a hand over the covered and closed spark chamber, then around the ports, lingering a lot more _carefully_ if not gently than what the mini between them had gotten, and then he pulled out one of the charge exchange cables. 

The _slag_ he would!

The weight on his knee joints increased as Runabout let more of his weight down to stifle the buck, then Cliffjumper had to try and jerk his helm out of Runamuck's grip because those greasy, sliding fingers were back. But overall his attention was on Runabout pulling the cord out as Runamuck let it go, a slender, innocuously blue thing topped by a jack he _knew_ wouldn't fit very well.

Usually, in a proper, _wanted_ situation, that wasn't much of a problem. The difference would heighten the charge the connection itself created, as well as the friction between the jack and the port, but this? 

This was not wanted, and he _really, smelt the slagger slowly in a pit of mercury_ didn't want to see the Decepticreep slowly slide his thumb up along the jack, striking little blue sparks and the black frame shuddering in the wake of the touch.

"Fraggin' tease. Get _on_ with it! Wanna see what it's like with somethin' tiny like this."

This was _not_ happening---

"How about _not_?" The voice seemingly had no one attached to it as the hand Runabout was holding the cable with was yanked up, and up, fast enough Runabout had no leverage and the yell as the cord hit its length and was yanked even further rung between them. The visor flashed as the mech was struck twice in invisible succession, only visible from the way Runabout jerked, helm snapping back and then his back curving backwards around something.

Cliffjumper didn't really _see_ much more than that, as he suddenly found himself tossed aside, Runamuck roaring. Wincing as he hit the stretch of floor between the two berths that dominated the room, Cliffjumper stared at the scratched and dull metal.

That was...

The sound of metal hitting metal was distant and echo-y, but that didn't make sense at all, and there was a faint draft over...

Oh, right.

Full awareness bled back as something heavy crashed into something else, a thunderous echo rolling in the rather small, artificially-lit room and Cliffjumper managed to close up his chestplates as Mirage flickered into view, crouching down in front of him.

"It's unfortunate for you that you're popular." Mirage's comment was as bland as his expression, and Cliffjumper snarled when the gag was deactivated and disappeared who knew where.

"Unfortunate? What's slag-eatin', FRAGGIN' UNFORTUNATE is you an' your slaggin' urge to kidnap people!" Cliffjumper fairly bellowed, static threading underneath the words and threatening to glitch into incoherency. Mirage tilted his helm in an acknowledgement and picked Cliffjumper up.

"True, I have to admit. It was hard to resist, though." For once, there was no meaningful glance down along Cliffjumper's frame, which could've easily have happened since, for once, he carried the tied-up minibot in his arms, instead of tossing him over a shoulder. Cliffjumper wasn't sure he liked this position any better than the other one, and barely kept from squirming.

"Hard to resist my _aft_ \---" Cliffjumper winced and snapped his mouth closed, his hands flexing behind his back. 

He couldn't curl up, and he slagging well _wouldn't_ , not right here in Mirage's arms even if the Decepticon had 'saved' him.

Because he hadn't _really_ had he?

He was still _stuck_ and certainly no safer than before.


	5. In Which There's Stasis Cuffs, a Kiss, and Iacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It might not be a very glamorous escape... scratch that, there's no escape here, but at least Cliffjumper does end up where he wants to be?

Cliffjumper's glare could've melted Mirage's chestplates and imploded the spark within if that was possible, and he hadn't taken his optics off the noble for the last several cycles. But given that Mirage had decided to tie him up on the berth, using a hook that for some unearthly reason had been hidden in the wall, Cliffjumper felt his wariness was warranted.

Neither colourful invectives laced with static nor kicks as Mirage had dumped him on the berth after looking around the room had stopped the Decepticon, and, tied up close to the wall or not, Cliffjumper was now pressed up against the corner at the head of the berth as close to it as he could come.

As if that could somehow protect him.

"Stop fraggin' _starin'_!" growling, Cliffjumper didn't feel ashamed in the least as he pulled his legs up tighter against his frame, his optics narrowing a shade further as Mirage's lips twitched into a slightly deeper and more intentional smirk. 

And then, slowly, he turned away slightly and pulled out a datapad. Optics flickering, Cliffjumper wasn't sure what to think about that.

On the one hand, he no longer had those golden optics slowly, again and again, flickering over his frame, the glow muted and Mirage's expression narrowed, but soft in thought. 

On the other, what had that all that _been about_ if the fragger was just suddenly going to do something else completely!? Nevermind that those looks had continually made him think of the Battlechargers, excess charge suddenly flooding his circuits in futile readiness in preparation to defend himself, and then he felt stupid because _they_ weren't here.

Mirage certainly was still present however, but while Mirage had slid a finger down the scuffed places on his frame, a bit too slowly, a bit too _thoughtfully_ , he'd ultimately left the agitated mini alone. 

Even when he'd for a moment lurked close, leaned bent over Cliffjumper and crowding him into the corner, thumb lightly following the cables in his throat and making him aware - again - how _vulnerable_ this position was, Mirage had then... backed off, went to sit at the window and stared at him and was now reading a datapad.

Or, at the least that was what he _seemed_ to be doing.

Impossible to tell, and as long as Mirage wasn't staring at him, he couldn't bring himself to care. Cared more about the fact that he was back in this room, and now on the berth. Even with Mirage nearly on the other end of the room it didn't feel safe. 

He also felt very, very bored. 

Unless he'd gotten his internal chronometer scrambled, they'd been sitting here for half a joor by now and compared to earlier today when he'd been stuck on the table trying to get free and having that to occupy his thoughts, he now had nothing.

For Cliffjumper, the rounded off hook to which he was tied wasn't enough metal, and not sharp or angled enough to able to lead the necessary frequency along it to disrupt the energon rope. Maybe if it'd been scraping against his hood, but even straightening got him nothing, and if he _stood up_ Mirage would know something was off. 

So that meant just sitting there, going from glancing at the door, to Mirage, to the sculpture-painting on the wall of the sonic canyon and back to Mirage every time the noble shifted even a little.

It made his circuits ache from the tension of the charge of extra energy flooding them continually and then being drained away to save what could be spared, but it also made the time slide by in agonisingly slow chunks. The only thing breaking them up was Cliffjumper painting imaginative escapes in his processor, which, at the end he ruthlessly and depressingly looked over for how possible they were---

Mirage shifted, and Cliffjumper's helm shot up from where he'd been staring at the berth and the piles of cloth, something about either tying them together to use as a rope to climb up the wall the balcony on the other end of the corridor outside of the room sat at, or melting them together at their edges to make some sort of parachute which _might_ break his fall a little if he tried to jump...

"What?" hissed Cliffjumper, the unfocused staring from earlier narrowing into a glare. Mirage shook his helm, almost settled back into the chair before he looked up again. Apparently the noble had got himself a new datapad at some point and _how_ had he missed _that_?!

"I could hook you up to one of these if you want something to do."

Incredulous staring swallowed any other possible response as Cliffjumper scrambled for some sort of response to that. Mirage's faceplates were mostly neutral but edged with an uncomfortably sharp thoughtfulness that Cliffjumper vaguely felt could easily be exchanged for some sort of _purpose_.

Some sort of purpose he doubtfully would like.

"You--- The slag---" Engine and vocaliser both sputtered, and the faint smile that curved over Mirage's lips shook caution loose. "You _offer me somethin' to fraggin' read_ , when _you're_ why I'm here and not 'cause I want to be, how 'bout you _do whatever it's that ya want to and get it slaggin' over with_ , you slag-sucking, glitch-ridden---!" the tirade broke down into static as Cliffjumper realised what it was he was saying, and as Mirage suddenly moved, slowly stalking closer.

"I don't think you want me to actually do that," the noble said, his voice like polished crys-mag and fine high grade, optics hooded and burning amber. 

Cliffjumper stared, optics growing wider as Mirage came closer, the light slithering off the angles and curves of his frame and it wasn't until Mirage's knee hit the berth that Cliffjumper realised how close the mech suddenly was.

" _Don't_ \---" the snarl vibrated in his mouth and he pushed himself backwards automatically, even if there was nowhere to go, and lashed out with a foot, which was caught with a reverberating clang which probably hurt Mirage more than it hurt Cliffjumper, but the noble just slid inside easy kicking distance.

"... 'Don't', what? You _were_ the one who just yelled at me to get whatever it was I wanted to do over with, after all." Mirage's knee was now pressing against his pelvic armour, the outer angles digging into his inner thighs and it was all he could do not to spread his thighs further to _get away_ from that.

He should have a reply to that. Anything other than staring, optics flaring bright and mouth working slightly aimlessly, as Mirage leaned over, and while he was a lot slimmer than the Battlechargers, while he'd been less threatening he'd also been a lot more _handsy_ and that sucking, black panic was crawling along his circuits again.

At least nothing was open.

Then there was a slim black finger trailing along his cheek, following the groove in it and down towards the angle of his jaw. 

The touch was like lightning, both exactly like what had happened before, and not at all, because it was a lot softer, more careful, but it still caused a reaction and Cliffjumper jerked his helm back and sideways and the crunch of metal being compressed was _highly satisfying_.

Mirage stared at him, optics cool, the upper edge of one of the optics arched, and as the taste of heat, static and traces of carefully rubbed-in polish registered, Cliffjumper spat the finger out, grimacing.

"Don't fraggin' do slag like that and I might no--dgfn!" He'd have bitten down again, but with two fingers shoved in his mouth he had a lot less leverage, such as it was. Mirage's hand was large enough even just one finger was large enough to fill nearly all easy space, and two took the rest. 

Trying to jerk his helm back only had Mirage following, leaning closer.

"I suggest you don't make threats, and become more discerning in what you say, Cliffjumper," Mirage murmured as he leaned close, his free hand trailing down a thigh, from the knee joint to the inner edge towards the pelvic armour, curved around his left hip and settled at his waist.

His designation being used by the fragger was _infuriating_ , but Cliffjumper was more focused on the touches than yet another disrespect of his space. Warm and large enough for the index finger to rub along the underside of the wheel set in his torso and as his shoulder, the hand was heavy against the metal there. 

Cliffjumper stared, anger warring with panic about what would come _next_ and only feeling some marginal relief from the fact that at the moment, he knew at least where both of Mirage's hands were...

Then the fingers were taken out of his mouth and he couldn't resist working his jaw to get rid of the tenseness, wilfully ignoring the trailing stroke over the top of his helm, and concentrating hard enough he felt his field coalescing in static prickles in an attempt to feel out where the touch would come next.

There was none, as instead there was the quiet, thrumming snap of the energon rope being cut. Confusion flared and he automatically kicked, swore and attempted to squirm out of Mirage's grip as he was pulled to _lie down_ on the berth. 

All Mirage ended up doing though was curl around him, Cliffjumper's back to Mirage's front, his long legs wound with the minibot's own. Cliffjumper felt decidedly aware - again, frag it all - of his (lack of) height as Mirage's chin rested on his hood, and his feet rested against Mirage's lower legs, somewhere below the knee joint but not touching feet.

What the slag...

"I'd recharge if I were you."

Then the lights went off and Cliffjumper was left staring at fuzzy gray twilight as the windows were automatically darkened as well. 

As if he'd be able to recharge! With the fragging Decepticreep noble _wrapped right around him_!

\------------------

Why he'd stopped, he wasn't entirely sure. 

He still wanted, after all. 

Wanted the tension that'd come not from pistons and cables frozen with anger and the armour held tight against the frame from the same, but rather those minuscule differences in the charge their systems could create, the insistent pressure and differences of differently proportioned equipment... 

Even now, in the later stages of recharge, the mini was tense, the joints in his legs locked as if that somehow would help keep him protected even when he couldn't curl up because their legs were entwined. 

He had an arm curled around Cliffjumper, the hand spread over the curving chestplates and in the last two breems since he'd come out of his slightly truncated recharge cycle, he'd felt several twitches as the minibot had tried to retreat from that hand that was right up against the armour over his spark chamber and simply met Mirage's front with his back. Then the hands, still tied behind Cliffjumper's back, would twitch in an attempt to use them to push him away, the low-activity processor hardly prioritising remembering the arms were immobilised.

All of that was accompanied by a fuzzily confused and then angry grimace before recharge smoothed it out again. 

It was much too... hm, adorable, and every time he'd almost decided to make his not-quite-there touch substantive, lay his other hand down on an arm and stroke along the seams instead of tracing the air right above the quiescent EM field that barely reacted against his fingers, he decided not to.

Which, really, was completely contrary to why he'd cut his recharge short. He'd already delayed earlier, to give some sort of time and distance between what Runamuck and Runabout had tried to do and what he'd certainly like to do. 

But now, lying here, curled around the minibot with his field a surprisingly still counterpoint against the still-tense frame, with slow, lazy cycling waves that concentrated and grew out from those little sensory horns.

Mirage told himself it was that, the tickling and open meshing of the recharging mini's EM field with his own, plus the twitching faceplates that he could see at an angle, Cliffjumper's nose screwing up every now and then, that stopped him. 

He still certainly _wanted_ to turn the mini around, grab his chin to tilt it backwards and kiss him, watch as those dark optics snapped online in shock and surprise and feel the immediate, deliciously vigorous response of the field and frame both but---

::Mirage, get ready.::

Ah. 

Deliberated too long.

Mirage shifted carefully, but not really enough to get his mouth next to an audio receptor... but that wasn't what he was aiming for.

"Cliffjumper. Wake up." The words were mouthed out in a low, vibrating murmur against a sensory horn, ending with a quick little flick of the tip of his tongue, and it was supremely hard not to smirk as he felt the rippling tension escalate in a wave as Cliffjumper came out of recharge with a start and a yell.

"GAH! The frag--- You--- I'm gonna _kill you!_!" fuzzy with static, it still wasn't hard to hear the shocked anger, and, underlying that, a curious little vibration that he knew the minibot was probably either not aware of, or angry at himself for it being there.

Extricating himself and tossing Cliffjumper a smirk, Mirage just chuckled at the responding snarl and went over to one of the storage compartments in his room, taking out a fresh power cell and the inert stasis cuffs laying in there. 

The only reason he didn't carry this with him was that, frankly, energon rope was more space-effective and could subdue an opponent nearly as effectively as stasis cuffs could. You could still have trouble if someone was stronger than the average, had a spark ability of the more unusual sort that didn't require a weapon or implement for it to be channelled through and would still need to field whatever protests a tied-up individual could make.

Stasis cuffs required a constant supply of power cells however, which took space away from other possible equipment. Without said power cells, stasis cuffs weren't very effective to hold a variety of individuals as the metal wouldn't be strong enough on its own. For a short time or if you needed the subject either completely unconscious or nearly so, stasis cuffs were a lot easier than most viruses, especially for short-notice containment, though.

"What's that for?" Cliffjumper's optics were narrow and bright in the dim light of early dawn light that crept into the room from where it spilled over the far-above edge of the continental cliff, and Mirage shrugged as he ambled over. 

Putting the power cell in and checking that it _was_ new, Mirage adjusted the settings and then aimed a tiny smile at Cliffjumper before lunging forward and turning him to face the wall.

"Just making this easier for us, but since you're going home, you won't mind it, will you?" 

He narrowly avoided getting the hood in his faceplates as Cliffjumper jerked when he once again spoke right next to the sensor horns, but then what he'd actually _said_ registered and Cliffjumper stilled, his EM field prickling needles against Mirage's hands and front in confusion.

"... Home? What..."

One cuff, and then the second was snapped into place, and Mirage could both see and hear as the effect took hold, the tension slowly bleeding out of Cliffjumper's frame along with the attempts at kicking him or trying to keep his hands out of the cuffs, and the jagged, static-laced voice that even in confusion had carried an underlying sharpness smoothed out into slow, fuzzy softness.

Turning Cliffjumper over on his back, it was sort of _surprising_ to see the nearly gentle slack on the mini's faceplates... and yet he managed to look somewhat angry, especially as the moment wore on and Cliffjumper, who wasn't actually in stasis, just nearly so, realised Mirage was standing right over him.

"Home, yes. Iacon." Leaning over, resting a knee on the berth, Mirage mumured the words right against the mini's now-soft mouth, and could admit to the sharp thrill that swung through him as Cliffjumper slowly mouthed the name of the city and continent after him. 

It wasn't particularly clean to play that way, but it didn't matter, now did it? It wasn't as if he'd have the time to _do_ anything.

Perhaps unfortunately so.

With a shrug, Mirage tossed Cliffjumper over his shoulder and left his room, wondering over feeling sort of _disappointed_ at the lack of protest, verbal or physical. 

But even if Cliffjumper being still and quiet for this hadn't been necessary in general, the disoriented, slow-processing state the stasis-cuffs kept him in would be necessary to trick his processors into giving up the passwords and codes to get into the Decagon, which was also the reason why he'd said where they were going right before he put the cuffs on.

It'd keep the idea of Iacon, and thus the Autobot headquarters of the High Council Pavilions, and, connected, the Decagon, in his processor, especially in this state.

The corridors of the settlement were mostly low-lit and quiet, not many up at this time yet. It wasn't a military stronghold on military discipline and time, merely a vaguely-affiliated place to relax... or hide out on the proverbial doorstep of the heart of Autobot territory.

Mirage ignored Catlin's pointed stare and slow, lopsided smirk as he came into the transport and the others paid no attention as he put Cliffjumper down and sat down beside him with Counterpunch on his other side.

Flagrant steered their transport away from their temporary hideout and back towards Iacon with practised ease; despite Needlenose being a flyer, he wasn't a good pilot. Mirage grimaced slightly at the thought of going _back_. Back to the place where the Towers were now merely pretty ruins instead of proud, _whole_ remains of what had been before the war.

"Here. Probably best you put it in now, to get used to it," Needlenose said as he handed over a chip, his flowing Crystal City accent rather soothing even if his voice carried the underpinnings of obnoxious dramatics. Mirage nodded, turning the chip over in his hands but stalling.

The chips, a continued development of Needlenose's earlier fashion chips which enforced temporary flashy paintjob changes due to rearrangements of a frame's colour nanites, could now also force parts of the frame around, changing the altmode and rootmode just slightly. Not an extreme amount, but enough that with the changed paintjob and perhaps some additional loose accessories, a mech could end up looking... quite different.

Not that _he_ technically needed this, but the Autobots would know they were four, so Flagrant would be the only one using her power to start with. It'd keep it uncertain how many they were, or weren't. 

With a huff and a shake of his helm, Mirage slotted the chip in place before Catlin could say anything and grit his teeth.

The crawling, static-on-magnetised-metal feeling of the colour nanites changing around came first, and then the sharp, tugging sensation along with grinding as his wheelmount twisted around and dropped low while the armour of his lower legs turned to the outer side of his legs.

Slowly letting out the ex-vent of hot waste air he'd been holding, Mirage smoothed his expression out as he onlined his optics again and surveyed his temporary red and gold paintjob. Rather flashy. He couldn't find he disapproved even if there was a constant, low pressure that nosed towards pain from the displaced kibble and armour. 

As a finishing touch, Mirage pulled out an inactive visor, slotted it into place over his optics and didn't even grimace as his vision rerouted and it turned on in a flare of blue and a brief hum.

"Keep sharp and play it safe, but at the same time, I doubt we'll run into any problems," Catlin said while he disconnected his over-sized visor with slow, precise movements that didn't really hide the reluctance for someone who knew what to look for. 

Mirage only looked at the mech and perfunctorily nodded because he didn't feel like watching the growing vista of Iacon's gold and bronze-tinted buildings as they came closer. 

"The Autobots have no reason to be looking for us in Iacon after all, and might not be looking for us at all... regardless of the fact that we left with one of their own." Catlin's gaunt, regal face twisted into vague amusement, his natural violet optics flickering down to the minibot and his vague expression and dim optics. 

No, the Autobots were probably attempting to find _Cliffjumper_ , but probably doing it with contacts through Kaon. But Mirage and the others had never actually revealed they had the Autobot... 

Which, really, they should have, and Mirage _would have_ , after he was done.

Now, they had a better use of their Autobot, however... Mirage shrugged and looked down, meeting the distantly soft expression that slowly focused into something like confusion as Cliffjumper realised no one suddenly looked the same. 

He smiled faintly and ran a finger down the side of the mini's face, the contrast of black on silver rather pleasing... and then stood up and gave Cliffjumper over to Flagrant for the moment, before that confusion could go into something else. He couldn't carry the mech since _he_ would be visible, but he didn't like handing the mini over, either.

He scowled, feeling somewhat restless and annoyed at the... possessive... feeling and then frowned at Flagrant's little smirk and follow-up salute, until it suddenly got hard to look at her and _see her_ , despite her colours. 

The hatch to their transport opened, and Mirage shook his helm. 

Time to work.

In the end, it wasn't particularly hard for them to simply wander through Iacon and up to the High Council Pavilions, and at that point the obvious group of four "lost" fourth third member as Mirage turned a corner and went invisible, while Catlin, Counterpunch and Needlenose wandered somewhat aimlessly for a while, 'sightseeing'.

Thanks to the schematics Counterpunch had provided, they all reconvened at a small side-door, set deep into the thick wall of the Decagon and hidden from immediate view as it was above ground level, two or three floors up with a non-active bridge that would attach it to the building nested up against the Decagon. It cast the narrow space between the buildings on ground level in burnished shadow while the sky above was burningly blue, with golden and pinkish haze somewhere far at the edges of vision. 

Mirage shook his helm, stopped considering the flare of fire and billowing black smoke that would have dirtied the sky when the Towers were bombed and took Cliffjumper back from Flagrant as they gathered beneath the door. With the help of antigravs Mirage and Counterpunch got up to the door, leaving only _barely_ enough space for both of them to stand in the recessed doorway.

"How do we do this?" Mirage murmured quietly while feeling along Cliffjumper's helm for the general access connection jack after transferring the mini into his arms from his shoulder, pulling it out after he found it and plugging the jack in easily as Counterpunch got the access panel open.

They waited a klik, but it seemed they had tripped no alarm even with the bridge remaining inert and recessed into the wall of the opposite building. Some Autobots did after all fly, so it wasn't improbable the doorway wouldn't trip an alarm just because the bridge wasn't activated.

"Let me just talk to him... I should be able to, uh, imitate something." Counterpunch was twitching and shifting from foot to foot, his white and green disguise paintjob for some reason looking decidedly odd on the mech. 

Or maybe it was the slight rearrangement of some of his armour; Mirage wasn't sure exactly what it was, but Counterpunch seemed more uncomfortable than usual. But then, he always turned like that when using one of Needlenose's disguise chips.

Shrugging, Mirage shifted Cliffjumper a bit as Counterpunch leaned over. When he spoke, his voice _was_ different, though Mirage couldn't put his finger on it. Softer, perhaps. Not quite as thrumming with aggression, but still just as nervous.

"Cliffjumper, we're here. Gotta report to Jazz an' Prowl and you're closer to the door. Can you open it while I send out a---" Counterpunch didn't even have to finish as the door suddenly slid open, and after Counterpunch and Mirage moved inside, two more came along.

::You know what needs to be done, and get rid of that Mirage. You can't be carrying him around this whole time in here.:: Catlin's voice was a smooth satin-finish murmur over the comm. before he, Flagrant and Counterpunch went one way, and Mirage went another. 

Flagrant could hide more people and without needing to touch them than Mirage could, so this was a practised parting. Only Needlenose was left outside, and he'd start making his way back to the transport.

He had no idea what to do with Cliffjumper. 

Oh, he knew what he _should do_ and also that attempting to bring the mini with him back to the transport would probably not work, even if he might have the chance to do as he wanted _and_ could then hand over the Autobot to Kaon, along with the information they'd extricate. 

But the second he put Cliffjumper down - which he _would_ need to do at some point – he'd become visible again and that would raise _some_ sort of alarm when it got noticed... So, really, what was left was finding a good place to dump the minibot... dead, as Catlin had implied, or... not.

A door into what turned out to be an unused computer bank room and storage for spare parts provided somewhere to put Cliffjumper down, settling him on the floor. Keeping a hand on Cliffjumper's arm to keep him invisible as well as upright, Mirage stared into the unfocused blue optics that kept trying to fight into focus, kept trying to lead to active processing of what was being seen.

It did, of course, not really work.

He also didn't have all the time on Cybertron for this, so after a moment, a moment in which he'd pulled out his blaster and then put it away, Mirage leaned forward, cradling the side of Cliffjumper's helm with his other hand, fingertips grazing the base of the sensory horn.

There was a faint spike in the vent-cycle and Cliffjumper's engine from that, open and uncomplicated reaction because there was nothing to filter out said reactions other than the time it took for them to manifest due to the slow processing rate. With a slow, sharp smile curling about his lips, Mirage tilted the unresisting helm backwards and kissed the mini.

It was always interesting, fitting his lips against and around someone whose mouth was smaller, and the little noise that came after a few astroseconds - a faint, static hiccup - vibrated against his tongue as he pushed past a surprising if very faint resistance. 

A few more astroseconds, and Cliffjumper's lips were moving slightly against, with, his own, and a smaller tongue slid with clumsiness born both of slow processing as well as probable inexperience against his own.

Friction created little tongues of blue static to flicker around the softer, more sensitive metal of the inside of their mouths, tickling against the closed intake valves at the back and then - just as surprisingly as the earlier faint resistance - there was a slow, confused noise and Cliffjumper tensing in his hand. Mirage chuckled, feeling that tension tighten for another reason than Cliffjumper getting a vague idea of what was going on and who was kissing him, and then straightened again.

Looking Cliffjumper's faceplates over, fuzzy from stasis cuffs and kiss both, Mirage smirked, let Cliffjumper down on the floor slowly, and then quickly left the room. 

They were on a tight schedule now.

\--------------------

When the stasis cuffs came off, Cliffjumper was left staring in slow-processing confusion at the red and gold frames in front of him. That was wrong. Why was there... two frames? And red and gold? He had no idea what they were saying either, just that they _were_. 

Hands on his shoulders keeping him in an upright position until his frame and processor got the information he _could_ sit up on his own again. Knees on the floor. Fins and horns on each helm, respectively... 

Then _understanding_ kicked in and Cliffjumper shot up, staggering forward and only Sideswipe's tightening hand on his shoulder let Sunstreaker avoid the wild swing the minibot took at him.

"I'm fraggin' goin' to _kill you_!" the reaction as well as the rather embarrassing shriek, laced with static, was fuelled by a few days of frustration, confusion, anger, dwindling fear and some amount of shame from (enjoying) the pleasant tingling static that still clung to his lips from the kiss he could... more or less, anyway, remember. 

The stasis cuffs hadn't negated the memories of the half a joor they'd been on him, but for the moment recollection was slow and fuzzy.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, on their end, were left staring. 

First down at Cliffjumper, who had been missing since... ahem, the incident at the Towers when he got caught by the 'Cons, and then between themselves. 

Had he gotten brainwashed? 

Hit on the helm a few too many times - though he did look a bit better than when he went into the Towers building to search for survivors. Something about how his plating had a shine to it that it probably hadn't seen since before the war, and quite a few dings buffed out. 

Something was obviously wrong for him to lash out at _them_ however---

"And tell Prime we're gettin' slaggin' _robbed_ 'cause there's a Decepticreep in the Decagon!" 

There was more, oh so much more to say than just _that_ , but in the end it was the simplest thing to say... But it also seemed like something was missing from that statement, but Cliffjumper was unsure what. At least now they _knew_ as he stared _beyond_ the twins at Jazz who stood in the doorway and nodded grimly. 

Cliffjumper sort of... deflated in Sideswipe's grip after that, feeling... tired and dirty despite the still-shiny plating he sported. 

Jazz tilted his helm in a brief transmission before he came up and took Sideswipe's place beside Cliffjumper and started to skilfully and unobtrusively guiding the minibot out.

"C'mon. Let's get ya to the medbay."


End file.
